A/N: This is a very late giftfic for writer, MagMags. (Here it is, girl! Even though I finished a long time ago, and I messaged you like a hundred times about it, but I guess I might as well put it up now.)

Zelda belongs to Nintendo; Happy Reading everyone!

~ loveandzelink


This is Goodbye


A door.

A door defined as "Room 415" stood before me, chipped in wasted white paint and little seemly marks from nurses roughing their way in. A door like this shouldn't confine the most wonderful person in the whole entire world. There should be greater doorsdoors washed over in a splash of coated paint and doors shining a squeaky yellow knob, but well dusted from faint traces of fingerprints.

But, godsdamnit, it's only a door.

Coming to an end, I reached out my hand outward, reaching, reaching until fingers—my fingers—curled over the cold metal of the doorknob. I flipped my wrist, a small squeak signaled that the huge frame was crying to creak free. It was thoughtlessly pushed to the side but this stupid door portrayed as if it stepped aside just for me.

Ungrateful, I slipped through.

Inside was a similar story. The little room mirrored; the walls were chipped in wallpaper and portraits of dull flowers poorly tried to hide that fact as different marks littered across the dull flooring. There was dull furniture on the floor: a small bedside dresser, hospital machines that I haven't bothered to remember, a picturesque of potted flowersand so many of themending with a single bed.

A bed holding its prisoner.

She's a prisoner.

I unsteadily made my way over to her, my eyes trained on the irrelevant floor. Once over to her direct left, I perched on her bedside instead of making use of the bedside chair. Screw the chair, along with the bed, they were material accomplices of keeping her prisoner in this room that's no different than a jail cell.

I seethed with unprovoked anger and she sensed that of all things.

Silently, she could tell the turmoil racing in my veins and laid a faint hand over mine. Featherweight, papery, soft, cold, pale as the moon itself. She could sense all the different thoughts battling in my head and she squeezed her excuse of a hand over mine. Weak, painless, sweaty, reassuring, with the farthest of strength in the tiniest of muscles…

"Link."

I squeezed my eyes shut.

"Link."

Easily, my healthy hand flipped over her own hapless hand, taking hers captive as her bed captured her now. My other hand joined in the small ransom but with the care of someone who simply cared.

"I'm glad you finally came."

I opened my eyes. A bright-eyed girl gazed at me with a knit cap over her bare head. Her cornflower blue eyes were the only feature of her holding light; the paleness of her cheeks had forever lost the radiance of a rose and her lips fared the same. Usually hair the color of sunny summer hung near her temple before swooping past her cheeks. Now the strings of her cap brushed the colorless of her cheeks; pompoms dawdled at the end with rhythmic grazes to her chin.

"I've missed you."

Me too, I told myself, a burglar of my hand traveling up to finally meet herself. She was so different, too different as my hand roamed the valley of pale moonlit flesh. Shebeing heronly dropped her light head into my palm, smiling all the while my fingers curved over the light arc of her cheek.

Light. So light.

"Link? You don't look too good."

"I'm okay, Zelda."

She smiled even brighter, two features to carry her light.

"How was your trip?"

"Why are we talking about me?"

Her eyes crossed all the way to the right, as if pondering childishly with a tilted head. Perhaps if it was not for my hand holding her head.

"What do you want to talk about, Link?"

Gently, my hand guided its captive over to where she belonged. With the prisoner on the bed. Then it flew over to the prisoner's other cheek, curving along with it's accomplice. Her smile revealed a giggle, a flash of rose sprung before being taken over by the roaring paleness again.

"I want to talk about my apology."

Her eyes returned to normal only with the exception of beautiful, blue orbs widening. In shock?

"You have no reason to apologize."

"Yes. Yes, Zelda, I do. I'm sorry. Actually, 'I'm sorry' doesn't even come close to cover how pathetic I'm feeling. I'm just… so pathetic." I confess to her all-too shocked semblance, shamefully speaking to her twiddling fingers.

I go on.

"Those letters. URGENT URGENT URGENT, they all screamed at me but I ignored. You always had the most foolish reasons for urgent. You lost your favorite costume tiara, you lost your wolf doll, you lost your kingdom in Legend of Hyrule. But I didn't want to catch a plane back here to help you find some tiara, or some doll, or even some fictional kingdom. I knew you hated goodbyes. I thought you only wanted to see me again. I really thought you were just being selfish out of all things. That's what I honestly thought, Zelda, honestly."

Zelda stayed silent.

"But then my roommate noticed the letters and read one. He looked shocked, fairly enough. I was infuriated but then he argues that I should read a letter or two. There was at least three dozen, maybe even five. I had to read the one he had." I paused, resounding pains moaning from the depths of my queasy stomach. "Zelda. The only word to catch my eye. Ill. Then the whole. Zelda is terminally ill with brain cancer."

"Link"

"I read back to first letter. That date was seven months ago. Seven. Seven long months ago. How stupid am I?"

"I don't"

"It was rhetorical, Zelda." I laughed, humorless and this room amplified that excuse of a laugh. "So I booked the next ticket home. That was the next stupid move. You cannot leave right now, they said. Yeah, they were the 'Swordsmen Academy.' So I quit. I quit them and packed my damned things and left immediately to see you. Really, Zelda, how stupid am I?"

She didn't answer this time.

"Stupid, stupid, stupid me. Now I'm seven months and three weeks too late, aren't I, Zelda?"

"I'm still alive, Link."

"How much longer?"

Her smile saddened, back to featuring her eyes as only light. "Not much longer."

"Is it really too late?"

"Link," she whispered but my name slipped off her tongue in a muddled sob. I mentally kick myself for causing her to be in such the conflict of the truth. "There's simply nothing they can do. They found the tumors too late and it continues to grow even when my father placed me into the last resort, the surgery." Both of her hands flitted to my left hand where they clasped with that tiniest of strengths.

"There is nothing they can do, Link." At the end of her hope, she allowed a few tears to slip before I catch them from dropping off the cold valley of her cheeks. I stare at her, incompetent to her tears, then defiantly argue her, for her.

"Too young. You're way too young. Aren't the younger ones the better to live?"

"Too late."

I lowered my head in defeat along with disgust at the pining still tumbling in my stomach.

"It's not your fault, Link. Remember that there are no fingers to point at." She absently allowed a few of her fingers to brush against my knuckles, soft and light as dove feathers. I cringed that she thought innocent ways, even from what I had done to her.

Left her alone. Heartbroken. Helpless.

Alone.

"I'm the only one who deserves everyone's accusations," I argued, but helpless.

She smiled. "You can't always be the scapegoat."

Painfully, I remember our so-called past with childish demons towering over the both of us. I remember their eyes varying in green, blue, brown, and then that hated golden, but they all held that abnormal demonic gleam. I remember those glares directed at me before they charged to the side, to her. I remember panicking before lunging between and then bearing my punishment as long as I saved her. But now, in the future where they are here no more, there was no way to save her.

"I'm definitely not always the hero."

"No, silly," she seemed to further her efforts to push off my hands so she could set them in her lap, "you don't realize how much I believed in you. Despite what happens to you in the end, you jumped to become my hope. So you're not stupid. Not at all. Even though you said 'goodbye,' I kept faith in you 'cause you're my hero, Link. I've always had faith in my Link." A shy smile lined her lips and I only smiled back at her.

"I've always had faith in you too, Zelda," I mirrored her words, truth ringing with her phrase, "but this stupid hero isn't too good with goodbyes." I mentally slap myself for suggesting the future and then pity myself for gods-know-how I'll continue on this wretched world without her. Stupid, I am. Angry, my stomach twisted and turned in revolt.

Her shyness changed to one of confidence. A glow to her cheeks was displayed and I wished my hands weren't ensnared by hers so I revel in the warmth of those cheeks.

"This is goodbye… but where is that faith of yours?"

I answered her with a skeptical look.

"Erm… Faith?"

She laughed, the sound was dulcet to my ears and I bent closer to hear them echo off again and again.

Giggling softly, she murmured, "I do hate goodbyes." She closed those very blue eyes and I watched her closely. "Though we said ours, though I watched you board that plane, though I missed you from minute one, I still kept hope in that you weren't gone. Maybe it will be different this time," She opened her eyes this time to face me, "with me being the one on a long long voyage elsewhere… but I have faith that I will reside with my hero."

Sheepishly, I said, "That's really cute, Zel." Her words had flown right over my head.

"No, Link!" She grabbed at me, almost making me jump. Not from the sheer strength she imposed, but the surprise that she portrayed such excitement. "I'm with you!"

A bit taken aback, I squirm under her deceivingly tight hold. But as her forehead laid warm onto mine, I was disillusioned to think we could last in that position forever, so I relaxed to with voluntary shut eyes. Only a kitten's breath away, I breathed in when she did, however the resounding breaths did little to cover our placid pulses. The peace forced the end of the twisting in my stomach. Then, slowly, did she willed her goodbye as she broke away and I seeped in a small suction of air.

I stilled. She shuffled in her sheets.

I breathed out.

We both stilled.

"Have hope in me," she called from her bed. Her voice blurred, almost far away.

Far away she might be, but her words held the tiny ring of hope. And her hope glittered somewhere, strangely enough inside of me. I thought it might have raised from the black queasiness of my stomach before fluttering out from the ashes. Maybe this is what she meant as me never leaving? Is this the aftermath of goodbyes?

Is this what keeps us together?

"Yes."

I opened my eyes. She smiled sadly.

"'Goodbye' isn't so bad, is it?"

Beeeep.

"What was that?"

She kept on smiling.

Beeeeeep.

Damnit, I knew what that was. I knew that most machines in this cell of a room were nameless to me but one with a sound like that couldn't be hard to remember. I knew 'goodbye' should give me some effort here.

"Zelda."

Beeeeeep.

"If I can't save you, then a hero at least gotta raise his damsel's faith a little higher." Then did I only pull out a tiny box from my lap and into her hands, all the while biting back the urge to cry in front of her. Zelda held her breath while her fingers worked the translucent ribbon off the top of the box. Her forefinger only slipped at the end of the bow before the entire thing collapsed. Slowly, she swept the trail of ribbon off to the side then hesitantly lifted the lid off.

Beeeeeeeeeeep.

She looked up at me with wide, cornflower blue eyes.

I only smiled at her.

"I thought you sold this to get out of Hyrule," she murmured.

"I did." She raised a sapphire earring from the nestled cotton. "But what happened to you made me realized I should never had left. From you. Hey—don't give me that look. That pawn shop sold it back to me after I made a bigger offer to get my own damn earring back. You loved this earring. You loved how I kept it as the only memoir from my mom. When she was gone, you told me she was with me forever. I told you that meant nothing, yet I used your words as my faith. With you at my side."

Beeeeeeeep.

I anxiously picked up the earring and Zelda gave me her bare ear. "Only you could do that." I then clipped on the earring through the tiny piercing. Then I raised a metal tray to mirror her reflection. She hesitated, touching the blue with her light fingertips and twiddling with blue, lopsided eyes. Smiling weakly, she finally turned her head to view the diamond set in her flesh.

Beeeeeeeeep.

"It's beautiful," she breathed, almost as if her whole soul was placed into that one breath, "thank you, Link. A great hero, you are."

Beeeeeeeeeeeep.

"Zelda," I grabbed her, just in time for her eyes to be fluttering in a drowsy daze, "'Goodbye' will still hurt. And I'll still miss you. A lot more than you think… but if you have that faith of yours that you're with me… thenthen maybe things wouldn't turn out so bad." I paused. She fought against the ambush of drowsiness. "I have hope." I murmur after her.

Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

Damn, there's an undeniable commotion roaring behind me. Peoplegods know where they came fromrushed all around me as intoxicating wildfire rages and the same frantic heat enveloped me but I stayed calm. Although my words come in short breaths to mirror her own.

"And maybe it's a bit… stupid… that the hero… would fall in love… when it's time to say goodbye…"

Zelda opened her eyes, seeming to force her heavy eyelids upwards to gaze at me with those same bright, blue orbs. Tearshappy tearsglittered in those orbs as she murmured, "I love you too, Link." Tears burning, she neared her face to mine. I was left to voluntary close the distance between us. I held back my own strength, she neared death but that didn't stop her from tasting as every single bit of hope and faith burned onto her lovely lips. Sweet, soft, slow, this is Zelda. "Dear hero, this is…" she murmured, her words, barely words, low against my lips.

Then.

I didn't need to hear the next sound from that machine.

I didn't need to be yelled at to be moved away from Zelda's side.

I didn't need to watch as the light from her eyes disappear and her last breath flutter into mine.

I didn't need any of that.

Except, maybe, for her one, last…

"…goodbye."

[END]


I HOPE YOU LOVED IT, MADMAGS! Happy late gift! ~loveandzelink