disclaimer: don't own.
a/n: so so so many things to write—what hiatus.
warnings: i don't know if there are some inconsistencies ugh. plus some hints of link/midna.
. . .
there was once a princess
. . .
She can feel the grin behind his mask.
It's viscous and palpable in his voice—slick, venomous, deranged.
And she trembles, shakes, barely hanging to whatever childish defiance she had put up because she won't—never—give up.
She couldn't.
(Mother, she whimpers, pleading, soundless, Father, please, help me.)
Slain like mere livestock.
Crimson trickling down her cheek.
A single, last screaming glance.
(They do not answer her.)
Zelda, the gaze burns and imprints itself into her soul.
Live.
. . .
On top of the tower, like a damsel in distress, she is imprisoned.
(Last time, her brothers used to read sappy story books before bedtime because they knows she hates them and thinks of them as 'yucky'—preferring adventure stories that doesn't include desperate, useless, always waiting princesses on top of high towers—
But. But look at where she is now.)
All she can do (in the room of apathetic stone floors, unwelcoming bed and rusty steel railings over the tall windows) is nothing but recall.
There is nobody to console her.
There is no family.
There is no love.
Just.
A dying wish.
(Live, she repeats—again, again, again and again, live.)
. . .
The first was her oldest.
("Don't worry,"he pats her earthy hair, always fondly, and she relishes in it, "I'll be fine.")
The second was the middle.
("I'll check on him, but I'm sure it's nothing," he brushes the issue carelessly, with a grin, and it is comforting to her, "I'll be right back.")
The third was—
("Zelda," her name was said with a tone that indicates the impossibility of disobedience, "we need you out of here right now. The guards will protect you until we can catch up, alright? Please listen to us just this once—")
And then the supposed fourth, though never really is.
("W-Where are my b-brothers? …M-Mother? Fa-Father? What d-did you do to them—")
A scream echoes, piercing midnight like a sharpened knife on delicate flesh, and the whimpers haunt—lingering—in the air.
. . .
Rocking herself back and forth, she whispers to herself.
Frantic (they're notnotnot gone) and hushed (they'll come backbackback), eyes darting (we'll defeat the evilevilevil man) veiled with red cobwebs (and then be together like before—) of despair.
The bed creaks under the shifts of her weight. The footsteps of a guard nears.
(There is belief because in the corner of eyes, she can see the familiar grins and smiles and she reaches out to them most of the time but no matter what she couldn't touch them and she wonders every time why do they slip away like dreams and fairy tales that is so very far away—)
But the red had drizzled on her face like droplets of tears and they never did stand and laugh at her disbelievingshockedhorrified expression like a mere prank beca use b e cau se—
they
are
never
coming
back…?
. . .
She finds it futile to ask when the evilevilevil man comes and visits (bullies? bothers?) her. Instead, she glances out into the sky, gloomy and grey (with traces of… was it called twilight?), and forgets everything to remember nothing.
He chuckles—slick, venomous, deranged—but she doesn't respond because she finds silence is the best rebellion she can offer.
He taunts, jeers and laughs at her pitiful, young, weak self—his mask glinting slightly with the engraved tongue also mocking her. The purpose is to make her cry, plead or beg—she knows, so she tightens herself and her crumbling, cracking will together with battered ribbons of livelivelive.
And when he walks away, disappointment in his posture, with the heavy, wooden doors closing with a click, she gathers herself into a tight ball and wails until her throat goes raw and aching, bleeding with desperation.
Please. Help me.
. . .
(rip.)
She can hear tearing.
(rip.)
But she couldn't find what is torn no matter how loud it is.
(rip.)
. . .
At first, she thinks that it might be a fairy.
(But fairies glow and their eyes are not hard, sharp or callous.
…Though maybe it is. Everything is not how she knows it's supposed to be anyway.)
It's reasonable, she thinks, as she watches the creature with wide eyes—cautiously—as fear coils around her lungs, because it, she, he floats.
"Princess Zelda?" It, she, he sounds like the edge of a regal sword, distorted yet pointed, "You are… the owner of the Triforce of Wisdom?"
And she blinks, once, twice, thrice—eyelashes fluttering in the pale moonlight what—
"Huh?"
. . .
The next time she sees the imp (yes, she finally figured it out), Midna brings a wolf—its furry forehead inscribed with strange, white symbols of some kind—with her.
"He's the one," she gestures, lazily, towards the animal though human while it—him?—raises a non-existent eyebrow in return.
"Oh," she replies simply as she leaves the chair and owlishly observes the hero who will supposedly save Hyrule (her parents', her brothers', her people), "uhm, I-I'm Zelda and…"
But there is a lump—swelling, refusing to budge—stuck in her throat and she finds it difficult to move her lips to utter advice, words or anything—
For the first time, she notices the piece of a fetter with its chains broken around his leg.
(Something in her stomach plunges and she squeezes her hands together, nails digging into her palm.)
"Sorry," her voice splintered and heavy with unshed tears, "I-I'm sorry."
She is on her knees then and she peers into the blueblueblue eyes of the soon-to-be-hero.
(She realizes that it's a colour that's not twilight, grey or black but the open, vast sky that she's longed to see.)
"Poor thing, really." Midna starts, intonation coated with thick, feigned pity, "Doesn't know what's happened or where this is. Eee hee, you should tell him, princess." The imp finishes with a knowing smirk.
"This is Hyrule Castle." She answers instantly, halting herself from continuing with my home. "I don't know much about what's going on too but…" hazy smiles and grins flits through her mind—freezing, puncturing, "Zant. Zant is evil."
Midna scoffs and rolls her redredred eyes. "That won't really explain everything about the situation now, would it?"
Her palms chains her elbows (stop trembling, she chants, stop trembling) and she mumbles, slowly, hesitantly, "I—There was an attack. My oldest brother went to s-see what was going on. Then my second brother. B-But s-somehow that—that man," she hisses it through her tremoring as if it is vile—wretched, "still got through to the throne room a-and my mother and father wanted me to run but it didn't happen and to protect me they stood in front of me but there was red everywhere and they fell and didn't move after that while the man was laughing and I—"
The wolf nudges her and she flinches, the single touch as if singeing her ashen skin.
"I'm sorry. I-I—" she gulps, swallowing her distress and inhales, "Forgive me."
He gave somewhat of a nod, something in his face displaying concern. It warms her a little.
"It's okay." she says with an uneven smile, "I'm fine."
(When they went away with the warning of a patrol coming, she feels a little lighter somehow, somewhat.)
. . .
Happy birthday, Zelda.
She turns to face the ceiling.
You are ten now! Can you believe it?
The faces are a blur, indistinct.
We wish you happiness.
She shuts her eyes and drifts away.
. . .
They return.
But Midna…
(Too much—so much like how they had been when they had been unmoving on the cold, hard floor and then she sees themthemthem instead of the imp and she hears screaming and realizes that it's really just her own—)
"—I apologize," She stops screeching—with pupils dilated and bloodless cheeks—yet she is rigid, straighter and more confident, not quite like the girl they had met before, and they realize it is not truly her at all, "Zelda cannot cope with this situation and therefore, I shall guide you."
The back of her hand glows a faint golden light.
. . .
What should we do?
I don't know what you mean.
The imp needs your help.
Then give her help.
She needs—
Give it. It's alright.
Are you certain?
Yes. Anything to save Hyrule.
(For them.)
. . .
When she wakes, she sees green.
(She tastes the wind, dust grazes her cheeks and she wants to spread her arms wide, to laugh, to run, freefreefree.)
And all at once, she understands.
. . .
The hero that will save Hyrule is a funny man.
Sometimes, he is careless (for example, the many times he handles explosives) and makes silly mistakes that it amuses her.
(It helps her forget most of the time.)
But he is also so very brave that it terrifies her, crevices crawling to every inch of her heart, when he faces an enemy many times his size or almost falling in one of his hasty leaps.
And when he survives, donning on triumphant, proud grins with exhaustion clear in his muscles, relief flushes through her like the waves of violent floods.
(Link, she reminds herself, Link is his name.)
. . .
Midna is his shadow.
And she watches.
When Midna watches, Zelda watches too.
People. He talks to many—so so many—people and aids them that it truly overwhelms her with their gratitude and his willingness—he is of a noble heart.
(I should tell Father and Mother how he—Link of Ordon—should be a knight at the castle and—
Oh. Oh. …They couldn't do that now, could they?)
How can one person who's barely a man himself be so humble and selfless and smile so sincerely?
(No wonder this woman could grow so fond—passionate warmth, similar to the burning of firewood on a winter night—of this hero because even she, the young, the supposedly oblivious, understands to the very core of her heart.)
She thinks it must be a well-kept secret or there must be a guide book buried somewhere under the ground of the vast, outstretched field.
Like a recipe of one, two, three on how to move on and face your fears with head held high, fearless but finite.
. . .
As complicated Midna can be, she is not much as an enigma people think she is.
Deep, crackling flames with vivid colours of sunset, expanding, sheltering, embracing all underneath her. Amber breeze whipping strands of hair mischievously yet deadly and crushing when fangs are bared.
Because there is fondness there, throbbing, growing each day as she witnesses the light of the world, enchanting and peculiar to her eyes.
The woman never admits that it excites her to see the foreign.
(Link too, she muses, definitely.)
And so she finds the smiles of her essence morphing into childish grins once more from Midna's indulgence that is so very akin to hers.
. . .
There will be space of nothing and she would be with a body again, she imagines.
She would lower her head, clasp her hands together, and pray with tightly shut eyes.
(Because with all—everything—she is—)
Goddesses, please.
(—she wants them alright.)
Keep them safe.
. . .
Once, her heart leaps like that of a gazelle accompanied with a shriek of terror that escapes her absent lips.
"Link!"
And he pauses—barely, barely unharmed as the sole of his foot hovers over a section of a crumbling stair—and turns to see her.
She realizes with a jolt then that it wasn't her—Midna—
But her.
Zelda.
. . .
You care deeply for them both.
Yes.
Who is the hero to you?
A…
Lover, perhaps?
I don't think so. That is for Midna. He's more of a—
(A pause; a beat of silence, then—)
…a brother to me.
. . .
Suspended in the air, her body is pale, grey and scrawny (odd to see herself like this) that she thinks she could almost see a rib jutting out of her chest, a bump on her faded purple, previously glittering dress.
And they're back in the room again. The evil and her.
(She can still see some stains on the floor, smudged and dried but there and she wants to—
No. Breathe. In. Out. Breathe.)
Remember the secret recipe of one, two, three that she would need to ask.
To ask Link.
After this is all over.
(Zelda, and just like every other day, it's still scorching every inch of herself, live.)
. . .
The Dark Lord dies with a blade thrust through his old, withering heart, still on his own two feet.
And she rushes to him, heart pounding, mind reeling. When she reaches him, her fingers becomes liquid to fit into his, quietly, gently and he doesn't pull away. But he didn't move either.
(Unblinking and the only indication of him alive—not well, not unscathed, but still—is the nearly invisible fluctuations of his lungs.)
She grips tighter and perhaps, she didn't imagine the twitch in return.
. . .
"Is it over?"
"Yes."
"Are you okay?"
(Who is, after everything, who?)
"I'll… be fine."
. . .
There is incredulity in the thought of a single tear fracturing an enormous, ancient mirror into indiscernible, glistening fragments.
"Midna—"
And she vanishes just like dipping sunsets down the horizon and stilling, afternoon breezes.
. . .
It hurts, she sobs, it really does and I c-can't stop—
And arms are around her like a cocoon, saying I am here with you, but the waterworks couldn't stop because the strong, smoldering passion is gone and innocence are like ashes on the roadside, filling in fissures between flat stones with insignificance.
I know, he says, I know it hurts.
(And he does. He really does. So they're now walking on tightropes side-by-side with only silhouettes as their reassurances of not falling along with the other.)
. . .
She shakes without him.
Every corner is malicious. Every creature is savage.
"Princess, you can't—"
"Don't," the child hisses, though softly, "Don't call me Princess."
"Zelda, then," he sighs, "I don't think I can be with you all the time—"
"Stay," she doesn't release the fierce hold on the rim of his tunic, "stay. I—please."
(The last time she lets go with their grins and pets to her head as consolation, they never, never came back, didn't they?)
Something shifts. He breathes, "…Alright."
A flash of a smile—tiny, appreciative and old.
. . .
Can you help me?
You can face your fears.
But I—
Trust yourself. You were never a coward, Zelda.
. . .
He stays until she falls asleep, her hair like streams of copper on the white, feathery pillows.
And he leaves when her exhales are even, no trace of tense uneasiness on her bones.
But most of the time, he is on her bedside until the moonlight dims, birds chirp their cheery tunes and the sunlight shines through the high, heavy curtains.
(After all, healing goes both ways, right?)
. . .
A princess needs a knight, she says as she places a roll of paper on his hand.
He stares at the parchment as she twirls among the flowers, bees and butterflies—like a daisy blooming as it faces the sun—giggling in pure, untainted delight.
Would you please be the knight of this princess?
. . .
"My hands are sweaty, Zelda."
"I don't mind."
(It never really matters to her or him anyway.)
. . .
When the crown is atop of her head, she wants to deny.
But she thinks of fire and twilight, green tunics and yellow, then—
"From today forth, I am your Queen. I am Queen Zelda."
—brothers, mother, father. She is here.
(Live.)
. . .
Thank you, Link.
(For staying, protecting, living.)
You're welcome, Zelda.
(For soothing, trusting, smiling.)
A step, with interlaced fingers.
. . .
there was once a princess
young and chipped with a knight by her side, the hero of the land, though equally ruptured and bruised as she
and they are the balms to each of their wounded souls
. . .
—end—
. . .
a/n2: you know how i like angst/healing fics.
(extra notes: in response to the anon's review, Zelda is nine/ten plus she had a family. so different reactions to each situation with hints of my interpretation basically. hope that clears stuff up.)