-What Can't Be Heard-

"The Goddesses are too kind," Link said. "I never thought I'd see you again."

Zelda took a deep breath, pursed her lips, opened them again, said nothing. She held his hand in both of hers, his open palm cut and red and swollen. Her frozen fingers wrapped around his wrist. She sat in mud, soaked to the bone. The rain hit her back like daggers.

"I told you not to go," she said, despite herself. She looked at the ground. His blood mixed with the mud, streaks of red amongst dark sludge, and the rain, impartial, carried it onto the others. Corpses littered the earth for as far as she could see. These were her men—all of them, her men, her protectors. Especially him, who sat now in the aftermath of the carnage at the mercy of the Goddesses.

He'd lost an eye. Couldn't remember how it happened, he said, and even laughed about it a little. Of all times, laughing now. His lungs were probably filling with blood and rainwater. It could have been worse, he said. He could have been impaled through the neck with a spear, like the others, or had his guts ripped out and then shoved back in the wrong way, like the others, or had his head twisted off and crushed to the dirt, like the others.

Because being Chosen only gets you so far, he said, clutching his chest. A short bout of silence, and then he jerked forward, coughing blood. The rain could not wash the red off of his tunic. Perhaps nothing would.

Zelda's hands shook. "I told you not to go," she said again.

"I had to."

"You didn't."

She dropped his wrist. The air was heavy, her breathing heavier. There was a tightness in her chest that threatened mutiny. Everywhere was a tragedy waiting to be documented. Zelda fell onto him, her hands clutching his tunic, and she buried her face into his neck, shaking, shivering, not sobbing, never. He'd told her to stay strong the day he left.

"They're gone now," Link said. "They're gone. Hyrule is safe."

"The cost is too steep."

"The cost is just right," he replied. "Nobody else could wield the Master Sword. Its power won us the war."

Zelda hesitated. "We need you, Link."

"No, this is the end. The Goddesses are done with me."

"Nayru is crying!" Zelda said, grasping his shoulders. She threw a hand at the heavens, squeezing her eyes shut—no, she couldn't cry, not now—"Can't you feel it? In the water, the rain—each drop a pocket of her sadness. They've fated you for so much more, Link!"

He smiled. "We were never meant to be, you know."

Zelda stared back. The rain fell into her eyes and down her cheeks. Slowly, she lifted her hands from him, back to her, over her chest.

"That's— not what I meant."

"Then tell me what you mean." He took a sharp breath, closing his eyes. "I don't have much longer."

And suddenly she'd lost all fluency in language. The words were at the back of her throat. It was the rain. Too cold, too hard. Loud. The words would not come. The corpses of her soldiers spoke to her instead, but in tongues she could not understand. They sat limp on the earth, pieces of scattered sinew and battered organs. Hearts and livers and canvases of skin decorated with scrap metal and splintered wood.

Link could not be one of them.

"I need you," she said finally. She shook her head, forced her eyes shut. "I need you! You believed me when no one else did—you stuck by me despite my shortcomings, despite my foolishness and naiveté. All of my mistakes and wrongdoings all came back to you, and yet here you are! A thread between you and the gate to the afterlife, and yet—here you are."

She wrapped his arms around his torso carefully and lay her head down. "They would understand," she whispered. "Please don't die."

He didn't answer.

And she realized, then, that he had become colder than the rain.

~x~X~x~

A/N: Boohoo so sad Link dies waaah I've never read a story about Link dying before wow this is good writing wow so original :)

-Eternal Nocturne-

What Can't Be Heard - Completed January 23, 2017