After everything you've been through, you start wondering how you could have once believed in fairy tales. None of them told of how the princess—now a queen—would end up lying with her brave hero, away from prying eyes.

Although you think that that expression may not be the most appropriate to describe what you're doing. Nor 'make love'—such term would be much more suited to the sequel of the 'happy ever after' with which the tales you were told as a child ended. None of these terms can describe the feelings of despair, anxiousness and desire that both of you are experiencing. And such feelings ignore the tenderness that your acts could have had in different circumstances.

You're just fucking your hero—there's no other way to put it (and you're sure that the innocent princesses who starred in your fairy tales wouldn't even have heard of such word). Such a vulgar act, with which you're making a fool of everybody, can only be described in such vulgar terms. And you're fucking without even thinking in the consequences, just like two animals. Just like two beasts in the heat.

You also wonder how you ended up in your current situation. You've done it thousands of time before, and you know the reason perfectly, so you just start thinking why would you repeat to yourself the question that has been on your mind for such a long time, the question which is always tormenting you.

But your thoughts are suddenly interrupted as you feel his anxious mouth running up your neck. It's as if he wanted to taste all your guilt—his guilt—; as if he wanted to know all about this damn feeling that is always troubling you. And you don't know why he does this. Does he really think he can wash it away?

You moan, and realise that he won't. He won't make you forget about your guilt, and he won't forget his. But you can't help running your hands around all the scars across his chest, many of which you're to blame for. Nor kissing him, nor biting his lips in despair, so hard that you almost make him bleed for you once more.

His reply doesn't wait and he starts removing the humble dress you wore for your secret meeting. But you can't wait—you need to feel your guilt right now—and start helping him. Once the dress—or rather its absence—shows your chest, he buries his head between your breasts. This time, he explores more calmly the body he knows so well, maybe better than his wife's and probably better than your husband does. You tenderly caress his hair before showing him the way to go (you hope that he will act more unceremoniously than you).

His mouth, tongue and hands explore all the points of your body that they've known so many times before as if it were the first. His despair makes him feel that this may be the last. He breathes heavily between all the hungry kisses he leaves on your breasts and your stomach, as if his life depended on it. He whispers your name between groans; yours stop you from saying his. You both are breathing faster and faster.

You take his left hand into your right, in search of the divine symbol you both possess. The sacred triangle your paths meet when you were children; the sacred triangle that stopped you from spending your lives together when you grew into adults. The same symbol that made you remember the seven years you spent watching helplessly as your people withered away because of you, the seven years you're always regretting even though you never experienced them in this lifetime. Seven years he didn't live until their very end—but such a small part of that horror was enough to shatter him for the rest of his life. And you two are the only ones who can remember.

In your tales, the princess and the hero always faced the same obstacles—they were finally torn apart by the differences in their social status. When you were a child, you always thought that this was as silly as it was incomprehensible, for there was no law in your kingdom that forbid the monarch from marrying someone without noble blood (and, had it existed, it would have been unpopular). In fact, both your grandmother and you had married soldiers with no relation to nobility—even though they both held high ranks in the army—. And in that respect, the man who's exploring you with so much yearning is like your husband, a kind man loved by your people, and for whom, no matter how hard you've tried, you cannot feel the same kind of love that he feels for you.

The obstacles that your hero and you faced were of a different kind. The ancestral sage from the Temple of Time warned you about the endless dangers that a union between the holders of the powers of the Goddesses could bring to both of them and, most importantly, to the kingdom you both ought to protect. And duty alone was enough for you two to accept his words, after shedding so many tears and breaking so many promises. After all, duty has always ruled your lives, for choosing your own destiny is not among all the powers that the sacred triangle grants you.

At any rate, you have trouble thinking that the Goddesses would plan for their chosen ones to go in secret to the most remote inns in the kingdom. To fuck. Each of them is filthier than the last one, with the most despicable patrons you've ever seen. However, such companies and scenarios are the most—the only—appropriate.

He rises and carefully frees himself from your grasp, putting his hands on your hips. He wants to remove the dress that still covers half of your body and, as he pulls himself closer, you notice a bulge between his legs. But you don't want everything to end as soon as he. You remember the nightmares that always assault you; the ones where you watch from a glass prison, powerless, as he fights a futile battle against the man whom you allowed to steal so much from so many people. And everything ends when he...

(No).

You haven't found the courage yet to tell him about your dreams, and you hope that you never will. You can't stand the idea of making him suffer more than you've already done and still do. In any case, were you truly brave, you would have never ended up in a situation like this and you wouldn't be having an affair with him. If you were truly brave (and even more selfish and unconscious than you already are), your hero would also be your king. And your misery only gives you a greater longing for him, for making sure that he's still with you in the land of the living.

When he tries to undress you, you stop him. You put one arm around his neck and kiss him again, burying a hand in his hair. The other, meanwhile, runs slowly down his chest, until you reach his waist. You remove his trousers and his underwear, and with your hand you finally reach what you were looking for. Some slow groans between heavy breaths are his answer to your unhurried movements. 'N-not yet', he says.

He fixes his left eye on yours. Yearning, longing. You lower your guard and he finally manages to remove your dress and all the clothes that were covering your body. Still staring at you, he goes up and down your tights with his calloused hands, just before heading towards your sex. As you feel his fingers entering you, as you feel him slowly caresses the most sensitive part of your body, you pant. Your magic heals the wounds you make him when you dig your nails in his back.

You lead him towards the filthy bed in the middle of the hovel you're in, your wet lips kissing and biting his collarbone and his neck. A sharp creak reaches your ears when you finally fall on top of it.

He lies back and puts his arms around you; he asks you, groaning. While your mouth and hands go up and down the scars that run through his chest, you wonder how painful he must still find them, with a skin as sensitive as his. You remove the trails of your mouth on his skin with your magic. Instinctively, your hand reaches out for the right side of his face, where his last scar, one that runs across his face from forehead to nose-level, is. Even though you know that it will be as pointless as it was months ago, when he lost his eye, you use your magic one more time, to no avail. He asks you not to worry, caressing your hand with the back of his.

You plant soft kisses on his eyelid, his forehead, his cheeks; he leaves one on your lips. It's weird, you kissing so shyly; but you can't share any tender moments now, after leaving them behind so many years ago.

You take the jar beside the bed and start spreading the gel inside it on his organ. He lets out a strained noise as you stroke him at a faster pace than before. When you look up to his face, your imagination glimpses pain etched on his eye, his tousled hair obscuring the right side of his face.

And you remember the moment in your nightmare where his chest is pierced by a sword, after a spell topples him to the ground. The only thing he can do in his dying breath is look at your prison with his left eye and mutter a 'forgive me', while he drowns in the blood that floods his lungs and throat. The other man, with a smile full of teeth, breaks the spell that binds you—he'll allow you to say good-bye. And you run towards him, you run with all your might. And when you're finally beside him, the right side of his face is a bloody mess of bones. Your eyes burn; you fight back the vomit running up your throat. You don't even dare to hold his body, fearing that it'll end up more wretched than he already is. You can only cry while the man who's standing behind you gives you his damn smile, full of teeth, once more.

And you somehow remember having shed those very same tears, in another time and another place, for the wretched body in front of you. He has again paid the prize of your mistakes with his death.

You turn your back to him, hoping he hasn't noticed your reaction, and tell him that it's his turn now. But he hugs you tightly, his hand over your heart—it could explode at any given moment.

Thank the Goddesses—you can feel his heartbeat on your back and his warm breath in your ear.

He spends the next minutes saying your name, begging you to tell him what's wrong, his arms still wrapped around you. As you calm down little by little, you tell him that there's nothing wrong. He's beside you. He's alive.

When he finally realises that he won't get any explanation from you, he lets out a bitter laugh and says that he didn't know that he made such weird faces. Pinching his hand, you reply that he does, that he looks as if a spirit had possessed him.

(How can you say that after having that vision?)

Again, you ask him to go on. He spends several minutes hugging you, rocking your body gently, before brushing your hair aside and stroking your neck. His hand still over your heart, he goes down your neck and your back, placing tender kisses on your skin, still covered in cold sweat. He fondles your breast with his other hand as delicately as his calloused fingers allow him to.

You used to make love like this, many years ago. Nothing, after such a long struggle, threatened to tear you apart; you still believed that there was a brilliant future ahead for the two of you. But your predictions were wrong.

(Somehow, it didn't surprise you).

Your fairy tale turned into a pantomime in which you both play roles that you should never have accepted.

You're fucking. What makes him think that such innocent tenderness is appropriate in a time like this? Doesn't he hear the creaks that the bed makes whenever you move? Doesn't he hear the noise that sometimes comes from the floor below, when the drunk men and women there start fighting?

With the firmest tone your voice can deliver now—one that not even a child would regard as such—you tell him to hurry up. He releases you at once, and, when you turn back to look at his face, you realise that the pain you're glimpsing now it's not the product of your imagination. He bites his lips and apologises.

(It's not you he should be apologising to).

Once you are on all fours, he takes the jar and puts some of the gel inside it on his fingers. You shiver as he spreads it on your backside; it wasn't that cold when you had it on your hands.

You don't want more victims in your relationship (yet you thank the Goddesses each and every day for her resemblance to you, and not to any of them).

His fingers wander around your back before he slides one, then two, inside you, slowly opening his way. But he then leans again on your back, and kisses it tenderly.

'I love you.'

Oh, how you wished you could not answer him with those very same words, which only the man you pretended to marry for love should hear. But your wishes rarely come true.

'I love y-'

And your voice breaks as he rests his face on your back, and you feel his lips curving into a smile and his tears running down his cheeks and down your back. Your skin burns.

(Fool. Fool.)

'You shouldn't', he whispers in a flat voice.

He's right. You shouldn't, but you don't know how to let him go. He still believes in you, after everything you've been through; he still offers you his kindness. Whenever he comforts you when the weight of your memories is too much for you to bear alone, he simply tells you that you do way much more for him.

You get a lump in your throat; your muscles tense. You want to reassure him, to tell him that you'll always be beside him whenever his memories also hunt him. Your arms shaking, the only words that come from your mouth are a halting 'go on'.

Not saying anything, he places his hands on your hips and enters you from behind.

F-for the... f-irst ti-time in... months... i-it h-h-hurtsyou l-like... hell. He... so-on no- notices t... y-you're cl-clutching so... hard a-at th-the sheets that... your knu-knuckles... tu-turn white.

He apologises in a scared voice, and asks you to tell him if you don't want to go any farther; you reply that he should go on, since there's nothing wrong. Some part of you tells you that you had this pain coming.

He continues, very slowly, as your body accepts him. His left hand runs from your hips towards your sex. He caresses your most sensitive spot with his finger in a unhurried and erratic motion, as if he also wanted to stop the moans you're trying to fight back, and he slides another one inside you.

As he gradually and carefully thrusts into you, you can't stop thinking that you're like two animals, two animals unable to control their lowest passions. You both are lying like his wife's cattle. His breathing has got so heavy that you can hear it as if his head was just beside your ear. You tell him to stop in a voice so weak that not even you can hear it. You ask him two, three times more until you can make your voice sound loud enough.

You clutch the sheets again when he frees you in an abrupt movement, and you turn to face him. His... wife... his da-no you can't call her that. You can't call her that when she only shows you kindness. No matter how hard you've tried, you can't hold any negative feelings towards her; rather, she should be the one to hold them against you. There's nothing in her that can make you go farther without feeling any guilt.

(You miserable bastard. Whatever the circumstances, you have no excuse to do what you're doing).

Covered in sweat, he apologises again, he didn't mean to hurt you, and asks you what's wrong. You move a hand towards his face, as if you wanted to caress him, but you stop yourself from doing so.

'You neither', you whisper.

He stops you when as you get up from the bed, not saying a word. When you turn again to face him, you notice that, no matter how much he tries to hide it, he also feels your guilt. He hugs you tightly, and puts your head on his shoulder. He begs you to stay with him for the night. He won't ask anything more from you.

She's finally fallen asleep for more than a few minutes, after spending so many hours wide awake, with her arms wrapped around you and her head resting on your chest, listening to your heartbeat.

A nightmare woke her up in the middle of the night. She couldn't stop asking you for your forgiveness, her voice broken and tears falling from her eyes. But no matter how much you asked her what was wrong, she'd simply reply that she couldn't tell you; she swore it'd been just a dream. When you said that her dreams had always had some meaning, you only made her feel more uneasy than she was before. She didn't calm down until she put her arms around you and made sure that you were 'still here'.

You try to move a bit to get a better look of her face, being as careful as you can not to wake her up. The little sunlight that comes from the tiny windows in the room shines on her dishevelled hair, and—along with the lack of the make-up that she usually wears—lets you glimpse some small wrinkles in her forehead and in her eyes. You even notice the faint smell of her morning breath, but her case is, fortunately, not as bad as yours. The summer heat has you covered in sweat.

Many would say that her current looks are anything but flattering, but you couldn't disagree more. She looks so beautiful to you in times like this; she looks within your reach, and you forget that she's the queen and you were the hero. You manage to forget the fact that you both wield the power of the Goddesses. There's nothing you wouldn't give to see her face and all of her future wrinkles, her messy hair, her whenever you woke up in the morning. You smile; you smile like you haven't done in ages—waking up only to see her sleeping with her mouth wide open, in a gesture that showed some manners that would have shocked many of her former teachers, would be such a lovely way to start your day.

You take her left hand into your right, kissing her knuckles. As soon as she feels your touch, she says, in a sleepy and tired voice, something that remotely—well, very remotely—sounds like your name. You slowly trace the line of her ribs over her naked back with your left hand. The sound of her laughter takes you back to the days when she haven't recovered her memories yet, when her eyes still kept that childish innocence. And come to think of it, it's been a very long time since you last heard her laugh. Maybe she simply doesn't do it when you're with her; after all, you give her every reason not to.

But you stop tickling her. You cannot ruin the moment now that her lips have finally curved into a smile and that you've almost—almost—forgotten who you both are and the hovel where you're sleeping.

(She doesn't seem to remember where you both are, asleep as she is).

You wish that you were just Link, and she were just Zelda. That none of you had made the mistake of tying yourselves down to other people to whom you only cause pain. That you hadn't put duty above everything else, especially if that meant that you would end up shirking it like this.

But both of you have been blessed by the Goddesses, and you perfectly know that changing your fate and making such foolish desires come true are not among the wishes which Their power can grant you.

Zelda's conscience says "fuck" with no problem but can't bring itself to use… er… clearer terms to refer to the sexual organs. It's weird like that.

Months after writing the Spanish version of this, I still don't know whether I should give them a slap in the face or a hug. Maybe we should just have both.

I actually spent some time researching the history of lubes, only to come up with what I used in the fic… which simply says that they used… er… some kind of lubrication. Without specifying which. At any rate, it's better than the Brokeback Mountain-esque scene from the first draft.

Though I reckon that the story has strong soap-opera vibes, Zelda's daughter is her husband's, not Link's.