A/N: Part 3 of the Flinch Series. The title comes from the song "In a Sweater Poorly Knit" by mewithoutYou.
Sorry that I keep taking the angst to a new level, but I really can't resist with SamusxZelda. I'm bringing a few other Brawlers forward in this oneshot, but it's still about the girls. Review if you like it.
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I Do Not Exist
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The claw tears through the damaged helmet mercilessly.
It rips wires and flesh indiscriminately, soaking the forearm of the monster red with the blood of his uninspired victim.
Roaring his victory, Bowser raises his hands to the screaming crowd. He has defeated Samus Aran, breaking her winning streak for the third time this month and partaking in a most unexpected downfall of a fighter with a near-perfect battle record. (It has become a coup d'état in the stadium, a mutiny.) The playing field has leveled off, and Samus cannot call herself its queen any longer.
Bowser sees who's lying at his scaly feet and brusquely kicks her off the platform.
The orange suit (and limp body inside) glows brightly as it plummets through the air before flashing into the realm of the losers and their medicine. Only winners can walk away from the arena with their heads held high, and, at this point, Samus cannot keep an inch of her mangled frame on the ground. She hardly remembers falling.
The lights in the infirmary wake Samus several hours later, and she can feel that half of her face has been torn away.
Even with the most advanced technology and most mind-affecting drugs, she can tell that her injury should be causing her more pain than it is in the empty hospital.
She turns her head to the side.
(It doesn't hurt too much.)
No one is there to see her.
(Nothing hurts too much.)
Her position does not change during the night, and when she wakes the following afternoon, only the nurse is present in the room, flitting around like a bird. Samus tells her not to bother fixing her scar, but the nurse insists on taking some kind of remedial action for the disfigurement. She keeps flinching like Samus is hideous to see.
Samus does not object when she places the crawling nanobots on the torn skin of her face. She does not cringe when she is forced to swallow them so they can heal her from her bloodstream. She does not cry out when they reshape her bones back to symmetry and her cheek to the rosy, unblemished expanse it used to be.
The nurse asks, "How do you feel?"
(I don't.)
"Fine," Samus tells her.
She rolls back to her side, spine creaking with her dead weight. She feels the brush of cool sheets against her skin, a passive reminder that she once enjoyed the warmth of another body beside her. The memory almost makes her angry enough to fight again, but she sighs instead, and thinks that she's had enough of being burned by the emotions she will never understand.
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Two weeks later in the trophy hallway, the Hylian and bounty hunter pass each other, eyes narrowing in their undeclared game of chicken. Although Samus has long since recovered, seeing Zelda before her is enough for phantom pains to tingle against her nerves.
It is the first time they have been alone since Zelda betrayed her.
(Samus tries to control her face, to remain empty and free. Zelda bites her bottom lip.)
The princess stops dead center in the hall, arms at her sides and eyes trained on Samus' newly healed face. She waits like a butterfly catcher, gentle and eager (and desperate in a way that neither of them are familiar with.)
Samus is unfazed. Her pace does not slow, not even in the moment their eyes meet, and she marches past her obstacle like a field marshal on a mission. (She is ashamed, and angry because of it.) Just as she passes, Samus feels a gloved hand reach around her wrist, lightly tugging her backwards.
"Please, Samus-"
(Fuck that.)
The change in her body language sends a jolt of anguish and horror through Zelda's mind. She freezes in panic for an instant too long.
Samus turns (tendons snapping, veins pounding, teeth grinding) like a pouncing beast, and drives her hand into Zelda's chin, slamming her into the trophy cabinet at her back. Zelda's toes brush the ground before she crashes down into metal and fragments of glass.
Samus' measured march continues, rage and derision counted out in every step.
Zelda stains the carpet burgundy.
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When Link finds her body, he shrieks like a madman. His strong fingers press against her wounds (warm, sticky, wet) as he calls out for help. No answer comes.
He pulls her against his muscular chest, feeling the slump of her thin frame like the weight of the world.
(He knows it was she who hurt the princess and, even if it wasn't, Link doesn't feel like being a hero when it comes to punishing someone like her. She would deserve it under any circumstances.)
He runs the entire way to the medics.
Link has no sword and no shield, and no magical gifts to fight with, but he does know his way around the modern battlefield world, and he knows who would ultimately decide Samus' fate. So he goes into the council chambers and tells the Hand.
The Hand is displeased. Injuries sustained off the battlefield are much more costly to repair, and a fight without an audience is a dreadful loss of profit.
The Hand is very displeased, but it is a practical creature.
It sends Link on his way without a final answer, and schedules a no-holds-barred match between Zelda and Samus.
It is a businessman about the whole ordeal.
The boy argues at first, hoping to be the swift blade of justice for such a despicable woman, but the Hand clenches into the Fist, and the bloodied Hylian needs no more prodding to leave the room as quickly as he came. The Hand doesn't want the young swordsman in any of his plans with Samus and Zelda; their fight is something too valuable to be spoiled by his interference.
(The Hand is nothing, if not practical.)
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The match is a sell-out and it's Zelda with her beautiful, blue eyes who is straddling Samus and pounding her into the tiles. She strikes devastatingly with her palms, guaranteeing no broken knuckles and no need to stop her assault.
(The packed crowd is foaming at the mouth, biting, snapping, howling for more.)
Her white gloves turn pink, then red, until the splatter of Samus' blood and sweat reaches up to Zelda's neck and collarbone. She heaves with the effort (gasp – crunch, gasp –crunch) of defeating her downed opponent until tears well in her eyes. They do not stop her, but Zelda knows that Samus can see her crying between the crimson splashes in her sight.
(There is something decidedly sexual in her motions, her screams. The crowd sees it, feels it, and they ask for more in the only way they know how. They riot.)
It fuels the Hylian like oil on a fire, bloodlust building deep in her stomach. Zelda feels what she has never been allowed to feel, drinking of the unfettered violence reserved for Sheik, but the red irises do not surface this time, long ago buried in her mind.
Zelda attacks faster, rocking Samus' ponytailed head against the cracking ground like the punching bags in the training room. The crowd yells louder, throwing food and breaking chairs with their vicarious rage. This is the best brutality they've ever seen from the Hylian woman. This is exactly what they paid to see.
"I did this to you!" screams Zelda. Samus cannot respond.
At the climax of her attack, Zelda stills her soaked hand. The pulpy body beneath her begins to glow, a sign Zelda has come to loathe since joining the league, a sign that a fighter has lost without redemption.
This time, however, it is not Zelda who shines with the shame of failure.
Samus' damage count has risen to its maximum.
The head medic forfeits her right to fight. (Ultimate disgrace.) It is the first time in the history of the league that Samus has lost by damage count. It is the first time in the history of the league that Samus has lost to Zelda, not Sheik.
Samus pops out of existence.
After body disappears, Zelda rises painfully, unsteadily heaving breath, to claim her prize on the winner's stand.
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Late the next morning, Zelda struggles to comb out her long hair. The night before she had collapsed facedown on her bed, clutching her hands tight against her breasts, praying for her throbbing fingers to stop reminding her that she won.
(They shake, no matter how many times she tries to clear her mind.)
Yesterday had been a trial. A miserable trial.
Zelda had once dreamed of defeating Samus. She had once dreamed of putting such a brazen fighter in her place, knocking out her teeth like a back alley brawler. Somehow, though, as Samus lay lifeless beneath her furious attack, Zelda felt like her dreams were a pretense for the acceptance she craved.
Craves. She still craves Samus.
(Her apology isn't worth the breath she would waste saying it, but Zelda aches with regret knowing that this time it wasn't Sheik who destroyed her world. Obsession is the only way she can describe her.)
Zelda banishes her thoughts for a moment, escaping to the simplicity of her pearly green comb. She knows she will go to the infirmary where all terrible things happen. She will go because she must, and because she will not be able to sleep until the next move is made.
(When she was a child, she used to play chess with her father. He would always beat her, playing faster and smarter than she could dare to imagine. "Your move," he'd say, and young Zelda would do her best not to scowl.
In her room she thought to herself, Your move. She still hid the scowl.
Zelda is a princess, even if she loathes it when she is alone.)
Zelda doesn't care if Samus tries to kill her again. (Apathy is all she feels now.) She doesn't care if she succeeds. She deserved it the first time.
She wants it the second.
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Link corners her outside of her room. He presses her to a wall (not roughly, but solidly) and his voice is raised in frustration.
He says something, she can't remember what, and it reminds her of you can do better than that.
(His eyes are dark, and he's panting like she's naked against his flesh.)
She cannot escape before he kisses her hard on the lips.
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The reverie is broken instantly when Zelda's lips remain unmoving. She frowns as if she's heard bad news from the palace messenger.
"You'll never kiss me back, will you?" he mournfully asks.
"I won't," she says, pushing against his chest. He is apprehensively staring into her eyes, actually trembling at her response.
"She tried to kill you," Link growls. "She always hurts you, and you always go back for more."
"Not always," Zelda murmurs.
He leans away from her, scowling in a way unbecoming of his boyish face. She magnifies his discomfort by walking off in a rush, hissing, "You don't know what I've done."
Link remains prone by her door because he knows it's true.
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"It's the end of an era," Falco grins. "I just didn't think it would be the stick figure to finally take her down." He curves his beak into a grin, nodding at Mr. Game and Watch, "I didn't mean you."
Fox knits his brow together as he pokes at his food. The cafeteria is mostly empty of fighters during breakfast, the morning hours are too perfect to pass up the training. "I don't think Zelda realizes how badly she beat her." He takes a bite, slowly chewing with his canine teeth.
"They're screwing, right?"
Fox chokes on his bacon. He doesn't need to ask to whom Falco refers.
"I don't… I don't think they talk about it," he spits out, wiping his chin with a napkin.
"That doesn't mean it didn't happen," Falco frowns.
The cafeteria door bursts open, pushed violently by a normally well-mannered Link. He looks flustered, bitterly stacking his plate high with food and slumping down at the nearest empty table. He glares at the back of Luigi's head as he eats.
"They're screwing," confirms Falco, and Fox takes another bite of bacon.
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Samus dances on the fringe of consciousness for two days. The first time her blue eyes peel open she thinks she's dead, but the acrid smell of rubbing alcohol informs her otherwise. (It is a momentary flash to reality, a fumbling reaction of her survival instinct.)
Samus is dying.
Once, she dreams that the nurse is on the phone with a frightening Voice, a commander she had once obeyed. She dreams that the nurse's knees shake when the Voice says to leave Samus alone. She dreams that, instead of protesting, the nurse throws a despondent glance her way before she hangs up. Samus wants to chide her for her cowardice, but her lips are sewn shut by fatigue.
Another time, when she is almost certain she is dead, Samus dreams that Zelda sits on the edge of her bed (like so long ago) and sings in that strange, melodic language she doesn't recognize. She is too tired to be angry (she isn't angry anyway), and the lullaby surrounds her until she sleeps again.
The last time she dreams, there is a thin woman yelling at the older woman in white. Samus doesn't understand what they say, and her vision is too blurry to read their lips.
They point at her bruises and at the phone. She feels the thin one take her pulse. She can hardly find it.
Her bones hurts, and her mouth tastes like iron, and her lungs feel heavy in her chest. Samus doesn't know why they are yelling, but she wants them to stop.
It is so loud, and she can't go under with so much noise.
(Where it's quiet.)
She wants to go under for the last time.
(Where no one exists.)
Samus stops breathing.
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