Work Text:
When the strange knight enters the tavern that night, she is the only one who leaves early. She’s careful to size him up before he can spot her, before their eyes can meet, and she figures it may not be as bad as she had hoped. He’s small, slight, even a little feminine looking. Only commands the room because he’s a new face in a small town.
He probably isn’t the one, she thinks, but she isn’t one for taking chances, so she slips out the back door before any of the local girls can ask him to buy them a drink or any of the local men can inquire about his knightly tales, and she crawls into bed that night hoping for a dreamless sleep.
The nightmares wake her up. She knows better than to go back to sleep, back to the world of the glowing woman warning her of the impending calamity, back to the world where the ground crumbles and cracks and shakes, where the sword is the only thing that gleams between her and her doom.
So she busies herself with the washing; her sheets had gone too long anyway. A little too mindless to ease the worry eating at her brain, but physical enough that the action commands her body’s focus. No shaking. No glowing. No visions.
She spots the knight, in the distance. He isn’t just staying the night, then. He’s practicing his forms against a tree. She pretends not to notice the power behind his strikes, the way his sword almost sparkles.
He can’t be the one, she thinks, because then he should be busy. He wouldn’t have time to loiter in a dying farming town on the edge of the world, falling inch by inch off the eroding cliff that once promised safety from the ocean.
She finishes the laundry without looking at him again, hoping he doesn’t look at her. Not that it matters, since he isn’t the one, and all he would see is a dumpy farmer girl washing out her bedsheets. She wishes it weren’t harvest season, so she could hide inside the schoolhouse, reading aloud to the children who don’t know they’ll never grow old. But it’s harvest, so they all wake up with the sun and then toil alongside their parents until the sun sinks back behind the cliffs.
She doesn’t go shopping that day or join the village in the tavern that evening, because even though he isn’t the one, she’ll wait until he skips town to join the townsfolk in their activities once more.
When she wakes too early once more on the tails of a nightmare (swirling red mucous swallowing the castle, strangling her lungs, eclipsing her light, eroding the sword), she needs the human contact to stay sane. A simple trip to the grocer, for some eggs or bread or whatever she can afford with whatever change she has in her pocket.
When she steps inside, intending to spend some time pretending to browse, pretending to feel normal, to not know what she knows, she sees him. Back turned, eyes averted, unknowingly caught unawares.
So she leaves. No bread. No eggs. No nothing. Because he isn’t the one, of course not, but he’s still here, and the sword on his back gleams too brightly.
She spends the day mending two of her favorite dresses and her work trousers. It wouldn’t have taken the whole day if she’d had other things to do, but she won’t leave her home again until he finally skips town, until he realizes nobody here has the money for a sellsword, until his sword cannot haunt her any longer.
She misses the tavern again that night, but she goes to bed early, hoping to make up for the previous nights’ unrest.
This time when she wakes from her nightmare (running through the mud, tripping and falling, a hand helping her up, impossibly blue eyes frantically meeting hers), her heart doesn’t slow when her eyes open. Her head spins, heart races, and she can’t breathe.
Until she leaps from her bed, out her door into the pouring summer monsoon rain, down the path into town, something pulls her, drives her, calls to her.
She knows what it is before she sees it. Despite her best efforts, she wonders if she’s too late.
She watches him land the final blow on whatever monster had gotten too close to town that night. She supposes it was her that probably drew the monster in. She doesn’t get a good view in the dark, only hearing a horrible ugly wail and a wet thud as it collapsed onto the muddy field, and then the lightning illuminates him for a terrible moment. His torso is all red and blue, bloods mixing into a terrible purply-brown. The sword gleams unblemished in his hand, but his posture is weak, exhausted.
She runs to him as he falls to his knees on the grass, and he turns to her almost as if he were expecting her.
“Are you alright?” She asks him, cursing herself for the way her gut twists at the sight of him. Black eye, gash sweeping from his temple to his cheekbone, split lip. Blood mats in his blond hair, but he smiles when he sees her.
“Finally got your attention?” He wheezes, voice crackling with what must be blood in his throat. His blue eyes sparkle.
He’s an idiot, she thinks, but she throws his arm over her shoulder to help him up, and she begins the labor of pulling him back to her home across town. She plays dumb. Maybe he won’t know, doesn’t feel the same pull in his stomach that she does, doesn’t feel the tingle where his skin brushes against hers.
“There are plenty of prettier girls in this town who will fix you up better than I can, if you want me to drop you off,” she says.
He huffs out a strained breath, leaning his head onto her shoulder. “No. You can’t run this time.”
Anger flares in her chest at the implication. “I never ran,” she hisses. “Don’t speak of things you do not understand.”
He saves his breath, perhaps because he needs to, until she pulls him through her front door and leans him against the doorframe. He won’t rest in her bed until he won’t get any blood on her freshly-washed sheets.
He watches her as she runs the bath, fetches her soaps and washcloths, and tests the temperature of the water.
“You’re staring,” she says, wishing her voice were harsher.
“You’re beautiful,” he says plainly, voice still unsteady.
“You haven’t enough blood to think clearly.” Of course she’s beautiful. All the dumpy farm clothes in the world can hardly hide her goddess blood, but she won’t be flattered by such cheap compliments.
She reaches back for him, helping him into the washroom before beginning to peel his blood-soaked clothes off him.
“I feel compelled to mention that it was not my intention for you to undress me this way,” he says, eyes hot on hers even through his bruise. His breaths are still shallow, body still weak, and yet his voice is clear.
“It wasn’t my intention to undress you at all,” she says, refusing to meet his eyes. When she finally pulls off his tunic, she’s relieved to see that the rain made the blood loss look worse. A cut on his lower abdomen, bruising on his ribs, perhaps a dislocated shoulder (not the one she’d been dragging him around by, thank the goddess), but nothing worse, it appears. His face bore the brunt of it. “Sit still and take a deep breath,” she tells him, planting her feet squarely in front of him.
He closes his eyes and does as he’s told, and she pulls on his arm to set it back in place. He winces, inhaling sharply, eyes squeezing in pain, but he relaxes quickly after.
She pushes him back onto a small stool to get started on his boots.
“Why here?” He asks and she pulls at the laces. The dried blood makes them hard to untie. She considers grabbing his sword and cutting them.
“I thought you wouldn’t find me,” she says honestly, finally untangling the knot and loosening the first boot.
“You know better than that. Why here?” He asks again.
“I thought you wouldn’t find me in time,” she elaborates, starting on the second.
“How many lifetimes? And you still have no faith in me?” He asks as she struggles with the second knot.
“So you believe in the legends?” She interrogates. He should doubt, she thinks. She has seen him in dreams, in prophesies, has known his face since she knew her own, but he was not told his own fairy tale before bed as a child.
“You don’t?” He asks, surprised. She pulls off his second shoe, stands up to pull him off the stool, and starts on his trousers. He almost squirms as she unties their laces.
“Why should I?” She can’t count all the reasons. She should because she knows the end is near, she should because she knew he would find her, no matter where she hid, she should because something woke her up less than an hour ago to find him and heal his wounds. She has no choice but to believe the legends; they wake her from her rest, they rob her from her body, they pry her from her will.
She meets his eyes as she begins to pull down his trousers, and he almost looks afraid for a moment. “What choice do you have?” He asks, voice shaking, and he lifts each foot for her to pull his trousers away.
Minimal damage to his legs, she observes. Bruising and a minor scrape to one knee. No stiches required here, not like his torso and his face. His shorts are brown with dried blood, however.
She grabs a washcloth, dipping it in the tub, and starts with his face.
“Why did you come for me?” She asks, avoiding meeting his eyes.
“There isn’t much time until we'll be needed,” he says plainly. “Surely you know as much.”
“And how should you know?” She asks, voice sharp. His hair will have to wait, she decides, rinsing the washcloth in the bath before starting on his neck and collarbone.
“She can sense it. The sword.” He turns his head to allow her easier access to the blood on his neck. She wants to glare at him.
“Then she should know it doesn’t matter how much time is left,” she says, rinsing her washcloth again. “We’ll lose, this time. She must know that.”
“You’re a pessimist,” he says, flinching as she dabs at the wound above his hipbone. It will need stitches, like his face. As she cleans the blood from his skin, she sees hundreds of scars mottling his body. These will blend in with the others, soon.
“No, I’m a priestess, and I’ve seen the gods’ intentions,” she growls.
“If what you’ve seen is set to happen, why bother trying to change it?” He asks.
Her eyes flash to his. They sparkle still in their challenge. “I’ve never claimed to fight it. Whatever force brings us back to the castle on the day we die, I’ve resigned myself to falling victim to it, even if that force is you in blind stupidity.”
“How do we die, then?” He asks. “So that I may know if I’m the cause?”
She pauses, tossing her soiled washcloth aside to grab a fresh one. “We’re in my father’s sanctum. The beast… it’s everywhere, it swallows us whole. And then it’s over.”
“What if we never go to the sanctum?” He asks.
She’s almost got him cleaned up enough to stitch him and then get him to soak. “You say that like we have a choice. You believe the gods to be fickle?” She asks.
He shrugs as best he can, in his state. “Either we are doomed to go to the sanctum, knowing we die there, and therefore every step along the way is predetermined, predestined, no matter how badly we try to fight it, or what you’ve seen is not destined to be.” His eyes are so sharp, so piercing, she almost stops in her tracks.
But she is disciplined, so she continues. “I fail to see why it matters which is true.”
He sighs. “If the former, then our choices don’t matter, and you know why I came for you, because you know we both must die. If the latter, then the future is malleable, and we can shape a destiny where we win, in which case you know why I came for you, because I haven’t given up.”
She tosses this washcloth aside as well, standing up to grab her sewing kit from the pantry. He waits patiently for her return, watching her pull out her needle, watching her disinfect it, watching her thread it, watching her pull at the skin of his abdomen to sew his skin together again.
“I think you came for me because my father asked you to drag me back,” she says, careful to hold her hands steady, to minimize how badly she must further mutilate him.
“You know my fealty is to you, not the throne,” he answers easily, as if she does know. As if she remembers every detail of every past life, as if he swore his allegiance to her in this century, in this body, in this lifetime. As if any of the past lives matter to this one.
She lets his statement hover in the air, turning it over in her head.
“And yet you came for me when I did not want to be found,” she says quietly, finishing the stich on his torso. She cuts the thread, and finally turns to his face.
His gaze nearly burns her with its intensity, eyes blue fire in heat. “It’s hard to be away from you,” he whispers to her.
“You have never been with me,” she scolds. She knows how it will end, because she’s seen it, and if fate is not set in stone, his mind is made up anyway, and he will pull them both toward it.
“So you can imagine what a relief it is for me to have found you.”
She begins the stitch on his cheekbone, careful to try to set the skin in its natural position. He holds very still, eyes stuck on her face as she works.
“Does my father know of your disloyalty to him?” She asks, pausing her stitching so he can respond.
“The crown will hear reports of how I am continuing to search for you.” He’s lying, she can tell, but she continues to stitch up to his temple anyway. She isn’t sure she could stop mending his wounds if she wanted to, the same way her body compelled her to find him earlier. Fate is set in stone, she knows. She doesn’t even have the option to fight against it.
“Before you drag me back to the castle, you must let me say goodbye to the children here,” she says, focusing on the last stitch. She ties it off.
“I’m not dragging you back to the castle,” he says. “I promise.”
As if his word means anything. She cuts the thread, and stands back to look at him, sitting on the stool in his filthy shorts, half-clean, stitched up. “What will you tell my father then? Tell me the truth.”
“Your father’s dead,” he says softly. “The crown sits empty. The advisors have sent bounty hunters after you in an attempt to fill the power vacuum. That’s why I came for you, knowing you didn’t want to be found.”
She sits back on her heels. The blow should hit her harder, should open an ache in her chest, but it feels hollow. Her father had been dead to her long ago, hadn’t he? All that is changed is he cannot come back. Not that he ever would have before.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and she pulls herself out of her trance to look up at him.
She doesn’t want his pity. She doesn’t want his anything, knowing how little time it will take for that to change. She only has so many more days until her body no longer listens, until she loses her autonomy, until fate overpowers her.
“You may bathe yourself further, if you wish,” she says, standing up. “Tomorrow, you’ll stay at the inn again.”
He looks almost like a wounded puppy, like he hadn’t expected her to kick him out. “Princess…” he starts, and she flinches.
“I haven’t been a princess in five years,” she hisses, stepping away from him.
“Zelda, then,” he says, and the sound of her name in his voice pierces her heart, flooding her body with warmth for him. She wants to cut her skin open, to bleed out the sudden affection for him until she is as dirty as he was, and her insides can flow free from the gods’ design like they did before he came.
But fate finds a way, and destiny cannot be fought, because he found her when she didn’t want to be found, and there is only so much time before they both rush into the sanctum to die.
In the morning, his injuries are gone. Even the thread from her stitches have disappeared, leaving clean, pink scars behind. She isn’t sure when the injuries healed—after she’d washed his tunic and trousers and hung them out to dry, she’d pulled up a chair next to the bed to sleep on (because Nayru knows she will likely fall prey to his bed someday soon, but she’ll be damned if she is so weak upon first meeting him), and his skin had been ugly and raw when her eyes finally fluttered shut. Perhaps sometime in the night, the goddess herself healed him.
She wants to roll her eyes. She wants to be petty, to be loud as she wakes, bang her cookware together to disturb his sleep… but he looks peaceful, sleeping in her bed, snuggled underneath her blankets. So peaceful, she has the horrible urge to crawl in with him.
Disgusting, she thinks, slipping outside to fetch his clothes so he can dress himself before getting started on the bloody mess left in the washroom. Even though the only evidence of his previous injuries on his body are the new scars, there is much more evidence on her floors and in her bathtub.
She’s almost halfway done scrubbing the blood off the floor when she hears the floor creak. She has an instinctual reaction to turn to face him, one that she ignores to continue scrubbing at the floor.
“You don’t have to clean up my mess, you know,” he says softly, his voice gravelly from just having woken up. She hates the way it makes her heart flutter, the way she wants so desperately to turn to see his tousled hair, his half-lidded eyes.
She ignores his statement. “Do you always heal this fast?” She asks, unable to curb her curiosity.
“No,” he admits, his voice closer behind her. She admits defeat, pausing to look up at him from her position on the floor.
He leans against the washroom doorway, still wearing only his bloodied shorts, the rest of his body clean. She’s unable to completely disguise her ogling from her position on the floor with a rag in hand—her face flushes deep scarlet, all the way to the tips of her ears, and her eyes drift over his form. He isn’t terribly physically imposing, his stature short and his build slim, but she can’t pretend he isn’t beautiful. He’s extremely well-built, slender muscles tucked neatly under taut skin decorated with scars. Her eyes flit between each one, over the way she can see the veins in his arm as he reaches up to scratch the back of his neck, back to where the line of his abdominal muscles points down…
She’s unaccustomed to seeing men in such a state of undress, especially men so appealing; last night she had been distracted by his injuries, but now there is nothing to distract her. As soon as she realizes what she’s doing (which isn’t soon at all, really), she looks away, face flaming even hotter.
“I think it’s just you,” he continues, and when her eyes finally flash back to his face (ignoring everything else), he has a horribly smug smile plastered on his lips.
“Your clothes are on the chair by the bed,” she huffs, turning back to the floor to continue scrubbing.
“I think I should take a proper bath before getting dressed, don’t you?” He asks. “And after, I can take care of the mess I made,” he repeats, his voice closer. She turns to look at him again, and he’s closer, and her throat feels too narrow and her mouth feels too dry.
She drops the rag immediately, standing and fleeing the room, refusing to face him, hoping for distance. “If you insist,” she stutters, her back turned to him. She takes a deep breath. Him bathing will help, she thinks, because it will be space from him.
She decides to start on breakfast while he bathes, trying to be noisy as she cracks open some eggs over a skillet. She can hear the water splashing in the tub, can hear when he crawls out and begins to let the water drain, when he starts scrubbing at her floor. Her house is too small for two. It’s hardly large enough for one, really; the only reason it had been empty when she arrived in town was because it was close to the cliff and got closer every year, and there were only a few years left before the ground beneath it would start crumbling.
She would count herself lucky if she had enough years left to worry about where she has to move.
He emerges from the washroom just as she is getting ready to eat. A hefty hunk of egg sits on her fork, poised to enter her mouth, and then she freezes, because his long hair is dripping sloppy droplets down his bare chest, sliding down to the towel knotted around his waist, and she wants to hate him for doing that to her. Her mouth waters, but not for her eggs.
“Enough for me?” He asks cheekily, grinning widely at her, clearly aware of the effect of his nakedness on her, and she curses her cheeks for darkening.
“No,” she huffs. “You’re clearly well enough to return to the inn today. You can eat there.”
His face falls, and he sits across from her, in the only other chair at her table, the chair no one has ever sat in. “You aren’t serious, right?” He asks.
“I am,” she says, stuffing a bite of egg in her mouth. The food is a good distraction, gives her something to focus on outside the way droplets of water keep falling from his hair onto his naked torso, the movement demanding the attention of her eyes. “I’m a serious person,” she says before her next bite.
“The mercenaries won’t be far behind, you know,” he says. “I know they sent some after me, too.”
She raises an eyebrow. “Do they not trust you?” She asks, another bite of egg. His eyes follow her fork to her lips. She pretends not to notice.
“They don’t trust the will of the gods,” he says evenly.
They should, she thinks bitterly. Nothing ever wins against the will of the gods. “What’s your point?” She says.
“My point is I can protect you from them better if I am close to you. And I can't afford to stay indefinitely at the inn.”
Any excuse at nearness. The gods have thoroughly sullied the poor boy’s mind, she thinks. “You’d just love it if I had to tell all the townsfolk I’ve fallen head over heels for the traveling knight and convinced him to stay with me forever, wouldn’t you?” She knows she won’t be able to embarrass him with his eagerness, but she wants to try anyway.
He smiles again, and she wishes he didn’t look nearly so handsome with such a roguish grin on his lips. “I would. But you can tell the townspeople whatever you’d like, or whatever they’ll believe.”
She isn’t halfway through her eggs. She pokes at them with her fork. Her appetite dwindles. “I don’t know if they’ll believe anything else,” she mumbles. “I went far too long avoiding you to pretend you are any sort of family. So I suppose I haven’t really got any choice, do I?” She meets his eyes, heart softening against her will at their sincerity. It’s imposed, artificial, no matter how genuine they may seem, no matter how genuine he may feel. It’s not his choice, not her choice—none of it is.
“I’m sorry,” he says quietly, and she frowns.
It’s not his fault he’s nothing but a vessel of fate. “You’ll dote on me in public when people are looking, enough that the story sells itself but not so much as to arouse any suspicion,” she says. “No pet names that could even hint at royalty or divinity, and absolutely nothing about destiny. Understood?” She asks, keeping her face sharp. He doesn’t need to know how fast her heart races over the thought of him doting on her public, because it shouldn’t race at all, and she’ll need to resist it.
He nods, his face a little crestfallen. If she didn’t know any better, didn’t know that the gods had rewired his brain to attach himself to her, she’d think he was disappointed at having to pretend to be with her. But she does know better, because the gods have willed it, and he’s probably disappointed at the boundaries she’s imposed. “Is…” He takes a deep breath, obviously embarrassed. This intrigues her. She wants to know how to embarrass him. “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable,” he starts again. Too late, but she lets him continue. “Doting boyfriends like to touch their girlfriends,” he continues.
Bold of him to ask for permission now, she thinks. “Whatever you think is necessary to sell the story,” she says, against her better judgement. “No more.” She should have set hard limits. No kissing on the mouth, no lower back or hips. She knows it will make it harder for her, when he takes her instructions to heart and sells the story. But she isn’t sure she can form the words on her lips; her staunch opposition to his presence is much more performative than anything else. As much as she pretends, it’s hard for her to say no, too.
“Of course,” he says, nodding his head in an informal bow.
She sighs, pushing the rest of her eggs out toward him. “You can have these. But you’ll be responsible for your own groceries, too,” she says, but he’s already scarfing down all her eggs. “I can’t afford to feed more than myself.”
“Not a problem,” he says, grinning at her. Her plate is clean. “I love cooking; I’ll shop and cook for the both of us.” His eyes shine, like he’s already thought up some recipes he wants her to try. As if he can’t wait to ask her to sample something of his. As if by magic (or divine will, more likely), she suddenly feels hungry again.
“And you’ll sleep on the floor,” she finishes, crossing her arms. She’s thankful its summer, so she’ll be too hot to want the heat of his body next to hers. Well, too hot to reasonably want the heat of his body next to hers. The gods will delude her into thinking she wants it anyway, probably. But she’s certain by winter, he’ll have dragged her back to the Sanctum to die anyway, so she’ll be able to remain strong.
He nods dutifully.
She frowns, reaching for the clean plate that once held eggs. “Go get your things from the inn, then,” she says.
He beams, immediately getting up. “Thank you,” he says, eyes glittering like he didn’t hear that she told him he’d be sleeping on the floor, nearly forgetting to grab his clothes from the chair and throw them on before rushing out.
Two words threaten to slip from her tongue, and she purses her lips closed to keep them from escaping. Hurry back.
After the third night that he sleeps on the floor, she feels her resolve weaken enough to worry her. Her dreams are different now; no more tendrils of malice choking her, no more desperate runs through the mud. Instead, she sees him—a version of him, it’s hard to tell, hard to remember, reaching for her. She reaches back frantically, their fingertips inches from touching, before she wakes up flustered to the scent of something delicious in her kitchen.
She doesn’t wake up before him anymore, since his miraculous recovery. Perhaps it’s because she’s relegated him to the floor, but no matter how early she wakes, he stands jolly in her kitchen, pancakes or waffles or omelets or something delicious on her cooktop, always ready a few minutes after she’s woken up, right when she wants them. Maybe it’s silly to assume three days in a row is a trend, but she knows she doesn’t have the luxury of happy accidents in life.
It’s despicable. When he sets the wildberry crepes down in front of her, piled high with whipped cream and powdered sugar, she almost wants to kiss him in thanks, head turning in reflex before she stops herself. “Thank you,” she says quietly, too close to his ear, her breath tickling his skin. She’s afraid he’ll hear the longing in her voice if she says anything too loudly. She isn’t awake enough yet to properly monitor herself.
He sits across from her, his own plate of wildberry crepes towering over twice the size of hers. The corners of his eyes crinkle when he smiles, eyes slow to blink, as if he’s still waking up, too. “These are my favorite,” he says, taking a huge bite. “My mom made them for me for special occasions when I was a boy.” She sees it instantly—a little sandy-haired boy with electric blue eyes, smaller than his peers but twice as energetic, stuffing bite after bite of wildberry crepe into his mouth as a pretty blonde woman smiles down at him. “I hope you like them, too.”
She takes a bite, holding in a moan at the flavors. The warm crepe, cold cream, and sweet berries remind her of lazy summer afternoons in Gerudo Town, when she was still allowed to go there, when Urbosa would get her wildberry milkshakes to help her beat the heat as they lounged in some shade. She opens her eyes to meet his, to remind herself where she is, who she is and who she is with, and he’s watching her carefully even as he inhales his own food. She blushes, but nods. “It’s very good,” she says, taking another bite. She’ll probably manage to finish her whole plate, despite the ridiculous portion he gave her.
He smiles again, an obvious pride that she likes something he cooked overshadowed by genuine joy that she likes her breakfast at all. She weeps for whatever part of him the gods had to cut out to make room for the part they inserted, the part that convinces him he must make her happy. There must have been something else there, with those wildberry crepes, beyond a drive to please the runaway princess. But now it’s gone.
She doesn’t look at him again until she finishes her breakfast. Wouldn’t it be callous, to indulge that derangement? To concede to the god’s cruelty of erasing part of his being? Wouldn’t it be better to resist, to prove the gods wrong, to perhaps allow him to get that piece of himself back? To give them both a chance at something more, something honest and genuine and organic? A chance at something beyond death in the sanctum?
When she finally looks back up at him, at the pure adoration in his eyes (which has gone entirely unearned by her), she forgets whatever point she had about resisting him. She can see some powdered sugar left on his lower lip, her eyes tracing the curve of it carefully. He has full lips, for a man, she observes. Kissable lips. Her cheeks feel warm as she thinks about licking the powdered sugar off, climbing over the table and feeling the curve of his lip against hers.
It would be easy. He wouldn’t fight it. He would invite it, would push their dishes onto the floor for her to crawl over the table more easily, probably cup her cheek gently with one hand, mouth hungry for hers after a lifetime of waiting. He would be grateful for the affection, would thank her, probably. He would taste like wildberry, would feel like a lovely lazy summer day. He would make her feel loved.
She blinks, pulling herself out of the fantasy. His eyes sit unwavering on hers, waiting patiently for her to disclose the turmoil beneath her silence. Like he doesn’t already know it, like he doesn’t already feel it as intensely as she does.
“I have to go into town today,” she breathes. She wishes she had said it normally, had put her voice into it. He can hear it, the way she holds herself back. She knows he can, because his eyes dart to her lips before returning to her eyes. How often does he think of kissing over breakfast, she wonders? How difficult is it for him to hold back? Does he know how easily he could persuade her to change her mind, to abandon her dedication to her cause, with something as simple as a kiss? Does he buy her act of disgust, or does he know she aches for him as cosmically as he does her?
“Okay,” he says quietly, voice soft. It isn’t deliberately tempting, doesn’t seek to push her boundaries, but it’s soothing and sweet, and draws her in anyway, just like the rest of him. Never pushing, never challenging, obedient to a fault, but persuasive anyway. She crosses her arms, leaning back from the table. She hadn’t noticed she was leaning in, before. “Can I join you?”
It’s cruel of him to ask. She wants him there, of course, because he’ll wrap an arm around her and kiss her cheek and her temple and her shoulder—any part of her he can reach, besides her lips, and she needs him there, because the town still has to think they are madly in love, and no madly in love woman would go into town without the object of her desire. “Yes,” she says, leaving off the please. She doesn’t need to plead with him; he’ll go anyway.
In town, his hand holds hers easily, like it fits there as easily as it does the hilt of his blessed sword. She pulls him along to the general store so she can buy some materials for the upcoming school year. Materials she may never end up using, because who knows when they’ll be driven off to their deaths by gods-willed insanity, but just in case. And even if she doesn’t end up using them… he holds her hand as she buys them, and she doesn’t have to turn him away.
When she’s picked out the paper and the fabric for the craft projects she has in mind, set them on the counter for the clerk to tally up, he kisses her on the cheek, too lovingly for their location. He sells it well, she thinks, closing her eyes, enjoying the burn of his lips on her cheek. His lips are hot enough to brand her, she thinks, and wouldn’t she like that? Wouldn’t she love to show something else off to the other girls around town, the ones who had taken their shot with him on those first few evenings she avoided him, the ones he never even looked twice at. Wouldn’t she love to watch to looks on their faces as he doted on her, visible marks of his love for her painting her skin.
She opens her eyes. He isn’t kissing her cheek anymore, because he’s better at this than she is. The clerk is eyeing her expectantly, and Link pulls out some rupees to cover the cost. Her face darkens. She shouldn’t let him pay.
“I don’t suppose I missed a wedding invitation, now, did I?” The clerk asks. Zelda blushes even more. Of all the times she’s shopped here, he’s kept it very formal with her. Never really accepted her as part of the town, perhaps sensing her deception.
“Not yet,” Link says, and when Zelda turns to face him, her face feels even hotter, because he looks at her like she’s the sun rising in the sky after an endless night, like she’s the answer to every desperate prayer thrown to the gods, like she’s the only thing he’s ever seen and the only thing he wants to see ever again. “Soon, if I can convince her.” His voice is so soft, velvety smooth in her ears, nearly hypnotizing.
She doesn’t need convincing, at least not from him. Not when the heavens have ordered her to love him back, despite her best intentions to resist.
The clerk sighs. “You don’t want to wait too long, or the winter will come, and you’ll have to wait until the spring or be married in that dusty old church. Best do it now while the evenings are still warm.”
It’s good advice. There are no winter weddings in Hateno, because the church is decrepit and there isn’t any room for dancing, no good food for feasting. For a single self-indulgent moment, Zelda lets herself imagine standing under the giant oak tree near the center of town, in her nicest gown, holding hands with the handsome sellsword who had only stopped in town looking for work but had stayed for her, reciting a commoner’s marriage vow to him, and dancing and feasting the entire evening away under a brilliant sunset.
Her father would roll in his grave, she thinks, smiling to herself, before turning back to the clerk. She has to sell it, too, she knows. Not like its hard. “I guess there’s no good reason to wait,” she smiles, and the clerk rolls his eyes, because doubtless he’s dealt with many lovebirds in his store, and he’s tired of their games.
Link gathers up her things in one arm, releasing her hand only to wind his other arm around her waist, pulling her into him. He’s warm, strong, familiar, somehow, and she lets herself press against his side as they walk back across town again. She fits well there, surely because the gods designed the both of them that way, she thinks bitterly, but she fits well all the same.
As they walk past the dye shop, in plain view of the town’s best gossips, he turns his head to whisper in her ear. “It would help sell the story, you know,” he says, his lips ghosting over the shell of her ear, breath hot on her neck, and if he hadn’t been holding her so closely, she would have stumbled. She’s certain he feels the way she slips, feels the way he’s affected her.
“You’d love to bind me to you forever in marriage, wouldn’t you?” She says back, turning so her face is inches from his. Her words biting, she keeps her tone gentle, so no eavesdroppers can overhear any hostility in her tone.
He smiles, kissing the tip of her nose while she faces him. “Yes,” he admits. “But it wouldn’t be binding, since you are not you and I am not me. You know that.”
She turns away from him, wishing she could stop the way her face burns. She does know that. Princesses don’t have countryside weddings officiated by the local dye shop owner; they have rituals and prayers and contracts and traditions. It wouldn’t count for her. Not that it would matter, since she’ll never grow old enough to have the marriage her father wanted for her, the one that would secure her place on the throne. She isn’t going back, not until she’s ready to die.
“I’ll get you a ring,” he continues, his voice so sweet in her ear she wants to sigh, “if you want one. Or whatever else it is you’d like.” What she’d like is for the gods to be wrong, just once.
“What is it that you think I’d like?” She asks, hoping to challenge him, hoping to break him of his trance. He doesn’t know her, not the way the universe wants him to think he does. They’ve only known each other for a week, because she doesn’t want to count past lives.
He hums, bending his head down to kiss the exposed skin of her shoulder. They’re long past any town gossips or other witnesses; but he’ll kiss her anyway. “A journal,” he says into her skin. “So you can write down everything that runs through that pretty head of yours, and hopefully someday let me read it.”
Damn, that’s a good gift, she thinks bitterly. She had many journals in the castle; diaries and research notebooks and sketchbooks. “Sounds like something you’d like,” she responds, shrugging her shoulder to get some distance from him. She needs it, or she’ll get sloppy and break, and it will all be over.
“Yeah,” he responds, backing off, because he doesn’t push her even though he could so easily break her, and she almost winces at the loss.
That night in her bed, she fights a vicious war against her own body. It’s a warm summer night, but she’s nearly shivering under her blankets. Her bed is not large, and yet she is too small for it. No matter how she orients her body, her muscles ache.
It’s not fair. It’s too much. Who is she to fight against the will of the gods? Blood of the goddess or not, she is mortal; too mortal to hope to resist divine intervention. It doesn’t matter how badly she wants to escape the sanctum, how desperately she wants to stay a teacher in Hateno with the sellsword, marry him before the leaves start to change, eat his cooking every morning and every night. Her destiny is to love him as much as she has in every previous life, and then to lose him when they return to the sanctum to face their destinies.
It's not fair, and it’s too much, but it’s not her choice. It never has been.
“Link?” She whispers, knowing it doesn’t matter if he’s asleep. Her voice will rouse him anyway, because the gods have made it so.
He rolls over on the floor to look up at her with those adoring big blue eyes of his. Perhaps he knows. Perhaps that sword of his didn’t show him their deaths, but showed him her stubbornness, her attempt at defiance. Perhaps he held back so easily before knowing it would take her so little time to give in. Perhaps she doesn’t have to say anything at all, because no matter what words fall from her lips, he will know that she wants him to crawl into bed with her, press his body against hers, wrap his arms around her, ease the ache in her chest, in her stomach, in her mind.
Perhaps he wants to hear her ask him anyway. “Will you sleep in my bed with me tonight?” She breathes. She doesn’t really have to ask. She could have simply told him to join her. The effect would be the same, because he was only ever waiting for permission.
“Of course,” he says graciously, abandoning the wooden floorboards to crawl into bed beside her, where there isn’t enough room, doing his best to keep any amount of air between them.
Ah. He misinterpreted. He doesn’t know she’s given up. Maybe he thinks she gets nightmares, or just wants his body heat. Maybe that sword of his didn’t know just how few nights it would take her to succumb.
“Closer,” she says simply, because he’s close enough to her face now that he can see in her eyes what she means, and his cheeks darken in understanding.
He pulls her into him, arms holding her close, tucking her head into his chest, legs tangled together. It’s a warm summer night, but she doesn’t feel too warm, and there’s just the right amount of space in her bed, now, and her body relaxes into his.
At least she’ll die happy, she thinks. At least she’ll die loved and cherished and held.
“Doesn’t it bother you?” She asks him, pressing her face into his chest to muffle her voice with his tunic. She’s ashamed for what she’s about to admit, what she doesn’t want to voice.
“What?” He asks, hand gently petting the back of her head, running down the length of her hair, smoothing it out.
She closes her eyes to focus on the sensation for just a moment. To let herself inhale his scent. To enjoy the peace she doesn’t want herself to have. “The gods willed you here, purely for their own goals. None of this is of your volition.”
“I’ll send them my thanks that they know better than me, then,” he quips, hand still steady. She presses her ear against his ribcage, as if trying to hear his heart.
“But you don’t have a choice,” she continues.
“I don’t need one,” he responds, his other hand tightening around her waist. Her heart aches again, beating so wildly she thinks it might be trying to trade places with his. Perhaps it already has.
“But you only think that because the gods want you to. If not for them… you’d feel none of this.”
He laughs, and she can feel it in his chest. “I believe that you would feel nothing for me if not for the will of the gods. And because of that, I am very grateful that they are so demanding. But I don’t need gods to make me love you. That was inevitable, with how beautiful and intelligent and captivating you are…” He sighs, as if utterly content to hold her next to him, running his hand over her hair, and she feels equally compelled both to nestle further into his chest and to scream.
“What if you hadn’t gotten so lucky, and I wasn’t so beautiful and intelligent and captivating?” She’s half-joking, because she knows herself to be those things to some capacity (he’s exaggerating, because the gods have wired his brain to see her that way, but he isn’t wrong), but not so much so that it shouldn’t still bother him. She could be perfect (which she very much is not), and he should still take issue with being robbed of his free will.
“Hm,” he hums, as if considering. “Fascinating question. I guess we’ll never know.”
Her hands tighten into fists. “You’re insufferable,” she hisses.
“Maybe so, but you really need to take that up with the gods, not me,” he murmurs, leaning down to press a kiss to the crown of her head.
She intends on taking it up with the damn gods, she thinks bitterly, before giving in, and nestling in closer to him. “I will,” she mumbles, but her voice lacks its bite. She can struggle all she wants, resent her free will being stolen from her, but that doesn’t mean destiny doesn’t overpower her. Against her better judgement, she needs him, loves him, wants him.
She inhales deeply again, like a dog tracking a scent. She should keep it to herself. Sharing with him is what the gods want. Giving in is further proving them right. “I just want the gods to be wrong about something,” she whimpers, unable to stop herself.
“You still think we’re going to die,” he responds, hand slowing over her hair until it cups the back of her head. She wants him to forget what she said, to grab a fistful of her hair and pull her face into his, to kiss her so hard she forgets whose design it was that compels her.
“I know it,” she breathes. She should stop fighting, she thinks. Give in. It isn’t like it would hurt. It would be easy, it would complete her, it would bring her the kind of peace she knows she will always crave, that she has limited days to enjoy.
“I have visions, too, you know,” he says softly, leaning down to speak into her hair. “The sword shows me.”
“What do you see?”
He hesitates. “You won’t like it,” he says finally.
“What do you see?” She asks again, her voice angrier. She lifts her head up from his chest to meet his eyes, knowing he’ll have a harder time resisting with her eyes on him.
“Us,” he says quietly. “We’re… older. Together. We have a family.”
She wants to roll her eyes. She should roll her eyes. But her body won’t do it, her heart thumps too hopefully in her chest.
A family. With him. They can’t do that, if they die. Her chest begins to heave, because she can see it too easily—Urbosa would hand her off at the altar, and she knows exactly the look he would have on his face at the sight of her in white: total devotion, complete adoration, a hint of reverence. He’d make endless love to her, over and over again until they fell asleep together, sweaty and exhausted and sated and ridiculously in love. He would hold her belly as it grew, listening and feeling and smiling, doting on her, holding her hand when she pushed, holding their child when it was born, looking at the baby the way he looked at her—
She closes her eyes to stop the tears from falling, but one slips out anyway. “The sword dreams, like you do,” she whispers, her voice shaking.
“The sword doesn’t know how to dream,” he argues, hand moving from her waist to trace up her arm.
“Then why do I see something different?” She asks.
“You saw that before I found you. You saw the future without me. What do you see now?”
She wants to gag. All she sees is him, now, in her dreams, in any possible way she can dream of him—she refuses to vocalize all the ways she has dreamed of him. He doesn’t need the ego boost, even if the gods-willed part of her brain wants to give it to him. “Just you,” she hums, giving up on sounding angry.
He hums contentedly at that, smile tugging at his lips, fingers tracing down her arm again. “Would it be so terrible if the gods were right about this?” About us? He knows better than to say it, knows she will fight.
“No,” she says, because she knows if the gods are right—if his gods are right, then she will be due for a lifetime of bliss with him, once the Calamity passes. If her gods are right, then it will all be pulled away from her. She tucks her head into his chest again. It fits so lovely there, she thinks.
“Tell me tomorrow what you dream of tonight,” he says, his hand returning to her waist, wrapping tightly around her. “If we still die in the sanctum, then there is no use resisting, because the gods will have their way. If we don’t, then you know that the will of the gods can be bent, and that my visions can be our future, too.”
It’s cruel, the way her heart flutters at that. The hope she feels blooming out from her chest, the electric charge on her skin. As if she can sleep now, knowing that she’ll wake up in his arms tomorrow, and he will ask her how she slept, whether she dreamt of him, and how… She’s too wired to sleep, she thinks miserably, but she’s wrong, because she feels his chest start to rise and fall rhythmically beneath her head. He’d already fallen asleep, moments after he’d tempted her, as if it were that easy.
It is; she’s asleep within the minute.
She’s a princess again, in the castle. Maybe a queen, even, if she’s seated on the right throne. She can see the blue skies through the windows, can see glimpses of Hyrule Field, lush and green and intact. Her throne room is empty of guards, leaving her alone, until she spots him.
He approaches her on her throne, a dangerous smile on his lips, bowing deeply. His face is a little different, a little older—he’s taller, too, she thinks. He stands up and approaches even closer, stepping up to her, reaching for her hand, pulling it to his lips to kiss it. There’s something in his eyes, a blue fire burning hotter than she’d ever seen before. “My Queen,” he says quietly, voice husky. He flips her hand over to kiss her palm, her wrist. “I missed you,” he says, kissing up her arm over the sleeves on her dress until he finds the skin of her neck, nearly tucked away under such a high neckline, but he kisses her there anyway. “I thought about you every day I was gone,” he breathes into her ear, sucking on her earlobe, moaning where she can hear him. She closes her eyes at the sensation. “Let me show you how badly I missed you, Your Majesty, please,” he whispers, lips back at her neck, teeth biting her gently enough not to leave a mark, but insistently enough to plead.
She opens her eyes, but she isn’t on the throne anymore. She can see the castle from where she’s sitting, actually, way in the distance—whole, unharmed, as imposing on the horizon as ever.
“Rawr!” She hears a child squeal from somewhere behind her, and she turns in time to watch a toddling blond child hobble a few precarious steps forward, arms outstretched, body unbalanced, cheeks full and round from a toothless smile.
“Have mercy, oh great hinox!” Link shouts, cowering in fear despite towering above the child. “Please don’t eat me!”
The child wobbles forward some more, fingers outstretched, another growl escaping between giggles.
Link looks awkward, pretending to run away too slowly for the meandering child, but his eyes gleam in adoration, lips curved into a smile, until the child reaches a clumsy hand out and grabs at the fabric of his pants. “Oh no,” he cries out, scooping the child up in his arms, holding it high above his head, earning a ringing giggle. “You got me!”
He pulls the child into his chest, ruffling tufty blond hair still growing in. He finally turns to meet Zelda’s stare, eyes still glowing, smile unfading.
“Was the hero so easily defeated?” She teases, and his eyes twinkle.
“Yes,” he says, walking over to sit next to her, child giggling still as he bounced his knee. “It was a fearsome beast that slain him; you should know he fought valiantly to his dying breath.”
The child turns to look at her from Link’s lap, eyes as impossibly blue as his, arms reaching for her as they did his pantleg a few moments before.
“It would appear you’re next,” he says, handing the child off to her.
She reaches for it, perhaps a little desperately, but all she feels in her arms is a pillow. A pillow?
She opens her eyes. They hadn’t been closed, to her knowledge, but she opens her eyes to the view of her one-room house, the smell of something cooking on the stove, the sound of soft humming and sizzling.
She sits up, immediately awake. He cautions a look at her, blue eyes as bright in her kitchen as they were in her dream.
“Good morning,” he says, turning back to whatever sits in the pan on the stove. “Breakfast is almost ready,” he says, poking at the pan with a spatula.
She stares at him, carefully comparing him to the version she just woke from. He’s shorter here, apparently not done growing (although he doesn’t have much more to go). His cheeks are fuller, face a little rounder. Her assessment in her dream was correct. She always tests them like this, if she can, to see if they are dreams or visions. If she saw the future or invented another present.
When he scoops the massive omelet out of the pan and onto a plate, divides it into thirds, and slides a third onto another plate, he finally looks back at her. “Hungry?”
“I dreamed of you,” she says unabashedly, because there’s no reason to beat around the bush any more.
He raises an eyebrow.
“I dreamed of you the way your sword showed you,” she says, and then she sees that blue fire burn in his eyes again.
He acts unbothered, grabbing both plates and setting them on the table, waiting for her to join him. She takes a moment to stand up, wondering if she can move without jumping on him. She manages, sitting across from him, only mildly distracted by the delicious smell wafting up from her third of the omelet.
“So the gods can be wrong, then,” he says. “Can’t they?” It’s not fair, how dark and thick his lashes are, she thinks. Not fair how beautiful he is when the corner of his mouth pulls back in self-satisfactory victory. How soft his hair looks.
“I guess so,” she says, biting her lip. Would he let her bite his lip, too, she wonders? If the gods were wrong about their deaths, could they be wrong about their lives, too? Their love?
“You’re disappointed?” He guesses, taking a bite of omelet. He must have used nearly a dozen eggs, because even the helping of one third of an omelet on her plate is huge, she realizes.
“No,” she says quickly, a half-truth. “I wanted the gods to be wrong about our deaths.”
“But?” He asks.
“What else could they be wrong about?” She asks quietly, embarrassed to admit it out loud.
His eyes soften, and he drops his fork to lean forward, grabbing her hands in hers. “They aren’t wrong about us,” he says softly, voice velvety smooth again. Her heart races, so fast it sounds almost like a steady hum in her chest. “I won’t let them be wrong about us.”
He squeezes her hands gently in promise, eyes sincere and firm, and she believes him. His will is more steadfast than that of the gods, anyway, isn’t it? Because she hadn’t dreamt of him the way he had her until last night; he had pulled her out from her destiny and into his, despite the gods’ plan.
He seems satisfied with the way her shoulders have relaxed enough that he drops her hands to continue inhaling his omelet, and she watches him carefully, slowly picking up her fork to start hers. He’s aware of her eyes on him, occasionally looking up to meet hers, to wink or smile or stare back, until his two thirds of omelet are gone, and she isn’t halfway through her portion.
Its his turn to watch her eat, eyes curious and probing, as if he hasn’t watched her eat breakfast every morning. She tries to stay as unphased as he was, but her cheeks burn at the intensity of his gaze. It isn’t a demanding gaze, because even now he doesn’t push her, but its magnetic anyway, heating her face until she finally sticks her last bite of omelet into her mouth.
“Can I talk you into a summer wedding, then?” He asks just after she swallows, half a second too late for her to choke on it.
She coughs on nothing in surprise, taking a moment to collect herself before meeting his eyes again, burning hot blue. “Of course,” she answers easily. “Next summer,” she adds, standing quickly and grabbing both their plates to wash them up, peeking only briefly at the shock painted on his face.
Not that it matters what summer they’ll wed, she thinks, because there will be plenty more summers for weddings, for picnicking out in Hyrule Field, for enjoying wildberry crepes and sun-kissed skin and cuddling together under blankets despite the heat.