Author's Note
||L|| represents Link.
Z|| represents Zelda.
Pretty self-explanatory, huh? ;)
Enjoy.
Disclaimer: I do not own the Legend of Zelda.
Finis
It was a symphonic movement of sorts, and it burned in his head like a permanent scar. The notes of steel hitting steel, of bated breath seeping from hungry lips, and of heartbeats keeping time as they shared one last moment before chaos overtook everything.
01. Fallen
||L||
The sword flickered, vanishing from its sheath and flashing in his hand—a blur of steel-colored fire weaving through the throng of silver armor plates and spears readied for attack.
Crimson splattered on the ground, sinking in between blades of grass as if the earth beneath them were bleeding slowly to death.
Everything was glaringly white, an empty canvas occasionally disturbed by streaks of red and grey—but the weapon in his hand moved nonetheless, like a possessed demon hell bent on drawing blood wherever it went.
His grip was slick and his face felt wet—not with tears, but with water.
(Was it raining?)
Dimly, he heard the cacophony of battle cries all sweeping all around him, a mix of deep and high piercing notes that made him cringe.
The continuous clang of armor hitting the blunt side of a sword followed, bringing with it the crescendos of dying words leaving parted lips as the Reaper took his fair share.
(Too many. Not fair. Never was.)
He heard his own voice, burning out from his lungs and forcing its way out of the roaring fire welling within his chest, and he recognized—with a slight degree of relief—that he was wounded and falling…
falling…
falling…
fallen.
(Maybe…maybe this time I won't have to get up.)
||Z||
She is blind to everything that happens afterwards.
They bring him to her, draped in heavy swathes of white cloth dotted with specks of red bleeding through torn skin. His eyes are closed, the hard line of his jaw turning purple and pink and the column of his neck drained of color.
She yells and screams and throws expensive things against the wall when they try to assuage her fears.
("He'll be fine. He always is.")
In the solitude of her room, she rages and pounds delicate hands on marble walls and fine china as they rush him to the infirmary and lock the door, just in case.
("That poor, poor girl.")
She spits fire at the doctors, feeling small and dark and angry when she realizes that it should be her who dresses his wounds and not them because they can't do it right and they'll hurt him.
("We're doing the best we can to keep him in a stable condition.")
She doesn't eat for a week and writes letters all for him so that when he wakes up, the first thing he'll think about is her. Ink stains the pages, forming elegant spidery lines that can only convey half of the emotion that consumes her so wholly.
("I miss you. I'm sorry.")
Her nights are long and restless. The skies are starless and dark. Her stomach is empty but her heart aches for his return because he's really all she needs.
("It's you. It's always been you, hasn't it?")
The roses in her courtyard are dying and when the messengers sent from victorious generals burst through the doors to tell her that they've—finally—won, it falls on deaf ears.
("It's over, your Grace! It's all over!")
She slips her letters under his door in the cover of the night and rushes back to her room to lie on her bed and stare blankly at the ceiling. When he wakes up, she knows that the first thing he'll think of is her—and sometimes, when she's less sure of it, she prays to the gods. Her handwriting is neat and legible, she's certain, but it will do no good if his eyes are still closed.
("Please wake up soon.")
||L||
He lives in his dreams, drowning in the artificial happiness he's found there.
He sees her standing in a field of wildflowers, a breeze whispering through her golden locks and her eyes—blue and forever like the sky—lock onto his, gleaming a hello.
They embrace and he's stiff all over because it feels unfamiliar and vaguely empty. Her smile is warm and pretty, but slightly off-kilter and he can't tell why. Her eyes are needy and bottomless as they pierce right through his mind, her breath is like ice on his skin when she laughs against his throat delightedly.
She tells him that she's been waiting a long time for him.
Her hands come around to the small of his back and cling there, fingers digging into the fabric and clenching it together. His hands hover for a moment, unsure, before they land gently on her shoulders—a sign of reassurance.
The wildflowers sway tunelessly to the wind and their scent hits him—almost too strong and sweet to be true.
She buries her face in his chest and holds him impossibly tight, her voice like steel slicing through silk when she tells him that she loves him.
He tells her that he loves her too.
||Z||
She should have known he would be hurt.
The men and women from the southern desert of Gerudo fought like hell itself, all scimitars and sharp arrows that always found their mark.
But they had broken their ties to the Hylian Alliance, severing any chance of peaceful resolution when they allied themselves with the lawless revolutionaries from the outer provinces of Hyrule and Altea to take the Crown captive and instill anarchy. It had set off her Council on a fit, goading the noblemen to prove the upper hierarchy's power over lesser people such as them—which, in turn, caused them to pressure her to declare war on anyone who would dare "oppose the law and the goddess' will".
Yet most of the blame belonged to her. She was too arrogant, too prideful in both the infallibility of her wisdom and the strength of her hero.
He was not invincible, not the immortal she held him to be in her eyes. He was still mortal, still able to feel and hurt, still fragile in the way all humans were fragile.
Still sleeping and distant.
They unlock his room and tell her she's free to visit whenever she likes.
She stays away because she doesn't deserve to whisper her apologies yet.
||L||
His dream world changes constantly, shifting in tones of color and light and scenery.
Cobblestone streets dusted with feathery blankets of snow unravel into messy golden stitches that weave back together to form a lake underneath a late afternoon sky.
She is the same throughout it all.
They sit on a shore, watching gentle waves lap over each other in perfect strokes and wash over the sand with a discontented sigh. She clings to his hand, her face pensive and grave as sunset came and layered everything in burning shades of orange and candlelight gold.
He tries to make her laugh and her face softens, eyes melting to a lighter shade of blue. He ignores the doubts that lodge within his heart, he ignores the cautious whispers in his mind telling him that this is all wrong, that she is all wrong and that he should not love her because she is not the princess she claims to be.
She sings him a song when night falls and her voice is lovely yet lacking the richness of the tone he is used to.
She tells him she loves him again.
He just smiles.
||Z||
Her resistance doesn't last long.
She finds herself stumbling to his room early in the morning, freshly woken up from nightmares filled with lifeless blue eyes and broken swords.
The sight of him nearly makes her faint because he looks so real and solid—unlike the wavering ghost of him she finds in her dreams.
A blanket is laid over him, tucked beneath his chin where she sees, with growing relief, his scars fading. His hands are cold when she takes them in hers.
His hair is still golden and fair—just as she remembered. They are soft and she smiles fondly—the first genuine smile she's shown in the past year—and tells him that he's grown even more handsome than she's ever thought possible. His breathing is shaky and ragged but she tries to keep calm and tells him about how life in the castle is ever since he left—dreary, dull, and almost unlivable at times.
She tells him that she misses him still and that she hates the fact that even though he's here with her he can't see or hear her.
She tells him that she loves him—it is a tired exhale of breath against his delicate cheek—knowing that her secret is safe.
He doesn't wake.
She cries herself to sleep by his side.
||L||
He's scared.
Scared of her.
His dream world changes, violently, everything bleeding into darker colors and blocking out the sunlight.
He tries to sleep in his makeshift bed while she paces to the side, muttering angry words under her breath. Her eyes are hollow and dark, he can feel them and see them through closed lids, roving over his features carefully.
She places a cold—cold, so cold—finger on his collarbone, hissing angrily when she felt his warmth. Her hands shook, plastering against the sides of his face and he wakes, shooting her an irritated look.
She blushes, but her eyes are blazing with anger—anger at him? She tells him that he's feverish. He tells her that her hands are cold.
The expression on her face changes rapidly, from fury to panic and she stutters and blinks away frantic tears.
Guilt wells up inside him, along with suspicion, and he apologizes, taking her into his arms.
She goes boneless, burying her face in his neck and crying almost hysterically.
He shivers.
"Zelda, you're so cold…"
She stops crying and clings tight, her nails digging so deep into his back that he lets out a surprised gasp. His grasp on her falters and she makes a low, indignant sound in the back of her throat, cheek plastered against his shoulder and fingers weaving through his hair.
Her breathing is labored and hoarse when she whimpers helplessly against him.
"Don't leave me, Link. Please don't."
He's not sure what to say.
||Z||
He shivers at night, skin feverish to the touch.
When she brushes a finger against his cheek, his brows furrow and he drifts away from her touch with a painful moan.
When she kisses him, her lips burn and he stiffens, sinking deeper into the pillow.
He's so close to waking up, so close to her—but she fears the distance that will eventually come between them when that time comes.
||L||
Zelda—the Zelda of this world of his—is beautiful and free and bears no crown.
Her hair—golden silk—is tangled and adorned with autumn leaves and stray cherry-blossom petals.
She can run through the never-ending valleys on her dainty, bare feet. She can wear dresses that can be stained and torn. She can laugh and cry whenever she feels that need to do so, and he can always be there for her.
Zelda—the Zelda of this world of his—is fading away.
And she is angry because he is not.
||Z||
There is color, a flush returning to his cheeks.
His hair is lustrous again, his lips bleeding back to their richly, pale hue, and his breathing is steady once more.
She is deliriously happy, peppers him with shy kisses, and lets light return to her world in slow, hesitant shafts.
He talks softly in his sleep, sighs nonsense words into the air, making them magical because she's gone so long without his voice and it sounds thick and sweetly lyrical in her ears.
She tells him that she will wait for him, no matter how long, but he must promise that he will return.
Her tears are salty and clear, and mingle in his hair.
He turns in his sleep.
||L||
She still sings for him.
But her voice is broken and narrow and her songs are aimless and distorted.
The moon is low and shrouded in mist and they are standing beneath a thick canopy of darkened leaves when she kisses him.
It is stumbling and desperate and he can taste her tears, the tang ringing clear in his mouth, but he doesn't pull away because she is so delicate and pretty and lost, and he cannot find it in himself to break her—apparition or not. He stands still, a breeze whispering between the tiny space that hovers between them, and she lingers, curling her fingers on his shoulders.
She is sweet but faint, and he can clearly hear the clap of thunder echoing far behind him over the shy humming in her throat.
The grit on her dress is a stark contrast to the fairness of her skin. Her eyes are murky and fathomless. She smells like the first night of winter.
He has to pull away for air and she makes a startled, small noise that makes his heart wrench.
Her fingers ghost over his arms, feeling the firm, corded muscles, and she stammers and reddens and flinches back—half transparent in her weakened state.
She bows her head, apologizes, and he places her palm against his heart.
They can both hear the steady beating, sense the thrum and timed pace.
She smiles, sorrowfully, and grazes his jaw with her lips and laughs feebly when he only smiles back.
She is leaving this world, she has to leave this world, she does not belong in this world.
Only he does. He and the rest of the fallen.
This state of mind is no state of mind.
The realization lodges in his heart, like the tip of the arrow that sunk in the flesh between there.
This is reality, the dreams have gone, and he is left with this empty, empty space where she is winking away from existence.
And then she's gone and he's all alone.
||Z||
He wakes.
Blue, blue, blue eyes stare up at hers, bleary and lazy, light singeing through the loose strands of hair that fall across.
She blinks.
He blinks.
There is one moment of silence, one beat of nothing, one breath taken before a smile shatters through her air of despondency and she launches herself in his arms, muttering and crying.
He is prone and stiff. He makes a muffled noise of protest when she squeezes him a little too tightly.
She laughs, vision blurred by tears, but his beauty gives way to clarity and she marvels at his tiny, smile—feeling the sun's radiance dim beyond them. His voice is a bit broken but strong, and she can listen to it all day.
"I missed you."
His eyes glow and he grins broadly.
"I missed you too."
||L||
He cannot stay for long.
She is beautiful and happy and alive and breathing under his fingertips.
But he cannot stay for long.
"I missed you."
His eyes widen, first with fright, then sorrow, then amazement, and he smiles at her
"I missed you too."
A kiss, delicate and chaste, pressed to the back of her hand.
"I'll still miss you. Always."
She looks confused.
He wants to explain.
But he cannot stay…
…it has been too long.
He cannot stay.
He kisses her then.
Everything plays over, winds again in his head, each scene flickering back and forth. The smell of her mixed with the sharp scent of too much blood spilled. The soft, velvety feel of her mixed with the touch of rough layering of iron cast over a slippery hilt.
…The sound of her breathing mixed with the thump of a body hitting the ground.
It was a symphonic movement of sorts, and it burned in his head like a permanent scar. The faraway notes of steel hitting steel, of bated breath seeping from hungry lips, and of heartbeats keeping time as they shared one last moment before chaos overtook everything.
Before reality overtook everything.
He leaves.
XXX
They bury him in the arching tombs where they know she would have wanted him to go. They adorn him in all the sayings and farewells worthy of a legend, a hero, and a lover—for the sake of the princess who has lost both her mind and her heart.
They walk past the room, where she sits alone, crying and laughing and hugging the empty air where he should be.
She is blind to the blood that has long bled and dried in the sheets.
When she sleeps, curled against the cold, arms reaching for the nothingness that lays beside her, the maids enter and dispose of the blankets.
When she wakes and walks out of the room, they cannot look her in the eyes, knowing that they will find only bright, hollow, spirals of madness where her heart lies scarred and beating for one who has left and is not coming back.
She saves her letters and reads it to his ghost at night.
And right when the moon dips low over the horizon and the leaves have darkened, she returns to reality for one brief moment and calls to the wind to carry out her confessions to him before insanity steals her away again.
They know she is falling….
She has been falling for a very long time…
falling… year past year…
falling…
falling…
Fallen.
Maybe this time she will not get up again.
Darker than what I intended. A lot more confusing too.
...But please review!
-HVM :)