She wasn't sleeping again.
It was far from the first time Zelda had noticed, but Samus Aran was not the type of person you went to for comfort, be it yours or her own. Zelda knew her friend would be quicker to kill than admit to needing someone to talk to, but that made it no easier to stand by and merely listen while she cried in her sleep, and it only grew harder to stand the closer the two became.
Though it was that closeness that made her finally decide enough was enough that night, giving her confidence enough to rise from her own bed and walk to the other woman's in the room that they shared. Samus' expression was troubled, eyebrows furrowed, mouth set in a frown. Occasionally a hand or shoulder would twitch restlessly, but besides the soft rustle the slight movement made against the fabric of her sheets, the blonde remained silent. Only when Zelda sat at the edge of her bed did she make a sound, a questioning grunt, eyes opening to regard to princess with skepticism.
Hair ruffled, blanket pulled up to her chin and expression puzzled, Zelda dared to think she looked rather cute.
"Trouble sleeping?" she asked, and Samus rolled her eyes, half burying her face into her pillow. She made no objection to Zelda coming over to check on her and, despite the fact that they had come to be close friends during their stay there, it was a pleasant surprise from one usually so aggressively reserved.
"No more than usual," she muttered, shifting as though to get more comfortable. She fixed Zelda with a halfhearted glare. "Go to bed, Zelda. You're gonna be tired."
"I could stand to stay up a bit later," she said, brushing off the command. "You, however, looked ready to collapse after your last match today."
"Well that would have been a disaster," she smirked. "No way your skinny-ass arms could have carried me back here."
Well maybe if you weren't so absurdly tall. "What I meant was, you need to get some rest."
"Great, well." She pulled her cover up over her nose, muffling the remainder of her sentence. "Go pray to your goddess of sleep to come hit me in the back of the head with her sleep sword."
"There is no goddess of sleep," Zelda scoffed, leaning back against the headboard. Samus shrugged.
"Could have fooled me. You have one for everything else."
"We have three," she corrected. "Honestly, were you listening at all when I explained this to you?"
"I drift in and out," Samus said, then snickered as Zelda shoved her arm.
"I could try to help you, though," she said after a few seconds. Samus looked up at her with an eyebrow raised.
"What did you have in mind?" Her voice was hesitant, or rather, as close to hesitant as Samus' voice was capable of being. Zelda patted her lap, and the bounty hunter stared at her suspiciously. Now it was Zelda's turn to roll her eyes.
"You trust me enough to keep a giant angry gorilla from pounding you into the ground in the middle of a fight," she said. "I promise you that nothing is going to leap out from my lap and attack you. Just lie your head down."
A few dubious moments passed. Samus muttered something that Zelda couldn't quite catch under her breath but complied, pushing herself up enough to set her head in the princess' lap before settling back down, though the tenseness of her shoulders betrayed that she felt nervous at the position.
"Relax," Zelda said with gentle teasing, tucking Samus' hair behind her ear. It was easy to forget just how long it was until she let it down at night, somehow managing to keep it smooth despite having it bundled up in a helmet for most of the day. Silence fell between them as Zelda ran her fingers through her hair, feeling Samus relax with each of the motions. It was a strange thing to see. Before that moment, Zelda could have never even imagined Samus looking that...vulnerable.
"Your hands are soft." A blush came to her cheeks immediately after the words were out, body stiffening in embarrassment as she turned her face in a weak attempt at hiding it. Apparently she had realized that it was a strange thing to say.
Zelda stifled the desire to laugh, knowing it would only serve to badly fluster her and likely cause her to pull away. As it turned out, spending years alone in space did little for the development of social skills, and it wasn't the first time Samus had let something slip while they were together, only to have it occur to her after hearing it out loud that it was awkward or badly worded.
She made sure to never tease her more than a little about it. After all, it meant Samus was letting her guard down, and that was something she cherished.
"Well thank you," Zelda replied, amusement suppressed but still present in her tone. Samus murmured unintelligibly and closed her eyes, demanding without words for Zelda to drop the statement and forget it had ever been said. Zelda watched as she settled again, not missing the way her mouth tugged downward and her expression naturally set to one of distress.
But her exhaustion was just as apparent, and even someone like Samus had trouble hiding their upset while tired.
"What's keeping you up?" Zelda asked quietly, the question hanging heavily in the air. She would say nothing more if Samus had stayed silent, not having been terribly expectant of an answer in the first place. There was nothing Zelda had seen the huntress to be afraid of, but when personal questioning began to rise, her reactions often became nervous and angry, and always avoidant. But Zelda still felt the need to try.
Her response came in the form of a sigh a few long seconds later. "Thoughts. Memories." Her voice was flat. "Too many of them. That's all."
It was said with finality, letting Zelda know that it was all she was going to get. It was short and vague, but it was far more than she knew Samus to be willing to say to anyone else, and it was as touching as it was painful to hear.
When all was said and done, Zelda knew little more about Samus than what was already known by the rest of the brawlers. Each of them had a public profile, available to any of the others who were interested enough to read it. Even if they weren't, general information and backgrounds were common knowledge among them all simply from having an open ear. Samus had seen her family killed when she was young, then was taken in by members of a different race who raised her to be a warrior. Her time was spent almost entirely alone and fighting. For her to not be kept up at least some of the time from the weight of it all, she would have had to truly be the robot some suspected her to be when they first saw her.
Zelda could offer up a little more, though (or, better put, she could offer it if she wasn't sure Samus would kill her for saying such things to others). She could tell about the cute way her lip pouted when she got really focused on modifying some part of her suit, or how heartwarming a genuine laugh from her sounded when they were making fun of each other. She could tell about how the hardened mask was dropped when she came into the room that Zelda entered so no one would see her upset, far from being the best with her words but offering to beat up whoever had made her sad, expressing the best she was able to that she was there for her.
Which made it hurt only that much more for Zelda to be unable to help her in return at times like these.
Perhaps the best she could do would be getting Samus' mind away from it.
"Talk to me about something," Zelda said, continuing to stroke the other's hair. Samus shifted slightly in her lap, eyes opening just enough to look up at her.
"Like what?" she asked.
"Something you don't have to think about," Zelda replied, thumb brushing against the blonde's temple. "Anything simple that can take the place of whatever is troubling you for awhile."
Samus sighed and allowed her eyes to drift shut again. Zelda waited patiently for her to come up with something, leaning back as comfortably as she could manage with the limited space she had given herself. It was dark, save for a lamp that had been left on over on Zelda's side, only the occasional sound of someone moving about in another part of the mansion interrupting the quiet intimacy of the room. She guessed even the night owls should be retiring soon enough. Quite a few matches were scheduled for tomorrow.
"I like space."
"Hm?" she hummed, urging the other woman to continue.
"Space," Samus repeated. "I know it seems big from down here, but it's different when you're up there. It's so...endless. Empty." Her voice grew heavier as she spoke. "You know if you head in any direction you'll find someone but, it's real easy to just get sucked up in feeling small and alone."
"It sounds very lonely," Zelda said. She felt Samus give a small shrug.
"I guess. But I'm not very good with people anyway. You know that."
Zelda smiled. "Still."
Samus' mouth twitched up. "Still." She paused, face betraying more was on her mind, and Zelda waited to see if she would voice it.
"Still..." she echoed, turning her head in an almost nuzzling motion in Zelda's lap. "I wouldn't completely mind having someone with me."
Zelda's smile widened. "If that was an invitation, then I'd love to go with you some time."
"Oh, well I was actually thinking about that big angry gorilla." She smirked, tapping Zelda's leg with her hand. "You might be more fun to watch blunder about in zero gravity though. I guess you can come."
Zelda gave her an almost-hard hit on the side of the head. "How flattering," she said drily, causing Samus to snicker. She teased her, but Zelda didn't miss the way she was smiling. She was clearly happy to hear that she would be willing to go with her.
"Why don't you tell me about those goddesses again," Samus asked sleepily, not even bothering to feign a tone of actual interest, but Zelda couldn't be too bothered by it. If hearing someone else drone on about something mindless for her helped her get to sleep, she was more than happy to do it.
"Alright," Zelda murmured, combing her fingers through Samus' hair. The woman in her lap let out a sigh of content as she continued. "The legends say it all started with three goddesses, descending upon Hyrule when it was nothing but chaos. Din, the goddess of power, Nayru, the goddess of wisdom, and Farore-"
"Courage," Samus interrupted. "And plants...right?"
Zelda narrowed her eyes and tilted her head slightly. "I thought you said you didn't pay attention when I told you about this?"
"I never said I did or didn't," Samus said with a small grin, and then, sincerely. "I always listen when you're talking."
Whether that one was fully intentional or another one of her slips of 'things-I-am-thinking-and-have-forgotten-that-others-wouldn't-say-out-loud', Zelda chose not to address the statement, mostly for the sake of her own embarrassment this time. She didn't quite trust herself to not blurt out something embarrassing in return.
She's so sweet when she lets herself just talk.
That's probably part of why I'm falling for her.
"Well, yes, you're right. Together the three of them shaped the world as we know it today..."
At some point as she was speaking, she became aware of the fact that Samus was no longer listening. She continued the story to its conclusion, mostly just for the sake of doing so, but with some vague hope attached that the sound of her voice might carry some comfort into what would otherwise be troubling dreams. Samus' fingers curled loosely at her waist, breath slow and warm against her stomach, and Zelda made up her mind to remain where she was.
It felt like the time where one was supposed to make some deep confession, where she might be expected to voice her feelings to the other who wasn't awake to judge them. She was fairly sure that's how the love stories went, anyway.
But sitting there, slowly stroking Samus' hair while she herself drifted into unconsciousness, murmuring quietly under her breath to a person whose trust in her to fall asleep in such a position would be absolutely unheard of, it felt just the same.
I swear I tried to not ship them but it just didn't work out
Here you go