prompt: scars
disclaimer: Zelda is not mine.
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Zelda ran her hands over his skin, feeling the rough scar tissue under her fingertips. Link's back had always reminded her of a map, laying out the suffering and the sacrifice plainly, for all to see. She spent many mornings this way, during the brief periods Link spent at Hyrule Castle, waiting for him to wake up and wondering about the story each injury told.
On their first night together, when they were nineteen and reckless and hungry, he had asked her if she thought the scars were ugly. How could I? Zelda had whispered, pressing a kiss to the warped flesh on the left side of his face where his left eye once was, and looking deep into the blue iris that still remained. How could I?
Five years later, she still remembered it in perfect clarity.
Her hand found a place on Link's upper back, where the skin was tight and smooth and hairless, and darker than the rest of his skin. The patch spilled over his shoulder and continued halfway up his neck. Zelda knew enough to recognize it as a burn.
"That one hurt like hell," Link muttered suddenly, his voice groggy with sleep.
"I'm sure it did," she answered softly as he turned around to face her. She didn't ask him anything—she never had, not since she was old enough to understand that Link had seen and done things he wished he hadn't. After all, everything Zelda knew of her counterpart's seven-year battle against Ganondorf came from what Link told her. She wondered about it, sometimes; wondered why the other Princess Zelda sent him back to live in a world where no one knew how close Hyrule had come to destruction. Even she didn't know the whole truth—only Link, and the long-lost fairy he could still hardly bear to speak of, remembered it all.
"It was in the Fire Temple," Link said, and her eyes widened. "I fought Volvagia…the dragon that was attacking the Gorons and holding them captive. It breathed fire."
Zelda grimaced in sympathy. Dragons, for her, were material for fairy tales and dreams. For him, they were a nightmare.
"The Goron Tunic kept it from spreading, though," he said quickly, seeing her frown. "It saved my life. And then Na—Darunia yelled at me to keep fighting, and Sheik patched me up, so…" He was looking at her in concern, and Zelda thought, Goddesses, why did you do this to him? He is so kind, so gentle, why him—why him—
"Don't do that," Zelda protested, trying to keep the edge out of her voice. "Don't worry about me instead of yourself. You don't have be brave all the time, Link."
Something flickered in Link's face, some brief emotion that was gone before she could identify it. "What do you want to hear? That I was terrified? That I would've died right there if Navi hadn't kept encouraging me? That I could smell my skin cooking? You don't need to know any of that."
"But I want to," Zelda murmured and she put her hand over his, over the Triforce's mark. "I want to know all of it—the good and the bad."
His single eye was locked on her face, and she could see his burning question without hearing him speak it—why?
"I love you," she breathed, and leaned in to kiss him deeply. "For your smiles, and for your scars, too."
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