AN: This fic took me so long to finish! I've been working on it on and off for well over four months now, and since today was our last day of Midterms, I celebrated by making myself sit down and get this thing done. I've been watching Doctor Who and playing Skyward Sword at nauseam lately, and this is more or less the product of both of them. This is based loosely off of the Human Nature/Family of Blood arc of DW, but you need no knowledge ahead of time to read it. This is the longest short story I've ever written in my entire life, and I'm glad I get to share it with you guys. I hope you enjoy!
Disclaimers: I don't own Legend of Zelda, Doctor Who, or Oxford. Also, this is a bit of a departure from my usual writing style.
Dedicated to loveandzelink, because she's the greatest reviewer in the entire universe and any other universes as well! I know this isn't exactly the fluff you asked for, but I hope this satisfies you for now, amiga!
They are standing in the labyrinth of whirring mechanisms. Their bodies are beaten and bruised. His lip is split, and the blood trickles down his chin in a thin red line. Hunched over and gasping, she watches him. His eyes glow in the warped light, more tired and more alive than she's ever seen them, more terrified and more courageous than they've ever been. Sweat drips through his hair, and his breath tumbles out of his mouth like demons trying to escape. Shadows play dully on the angles of his face. He stands like a statue crumbling, and she can almost see the way thoughts are colliding and bursting in his brain, the way they flicker and fade.
And then like an illusion shattered, he is moving, rushing across the room to that compartment he swore he'd never open. But now, his body partially obscured behind the generator that keeps the power going, the lid is raised and the fob watch rests in one broken palm. The watch's metal surface gleams the color of swirling fog and shimmering half-truths in the hazy light.
He speaks with the voice of a man condemned, but he holds his head high like the bravest of soldiers. He smiles almost painfully, and she tries to smile back, but good God, happiness proves difficult to fake.
"It's the only way," he whispers, so quietly she struggles to hear him. Her voice catches in her throat. She wants to say something- anything, everything- to make him put down the watch and find another solution, but her lips shake so much she can barely breathe, let alone speak.
"Three months." His voice is louder this time, his gaze wide and wonderful and terrible and absolute. "Only three months, and then we'll be safe."
She forces herself to stand, to stare him down with as much force and determination as she can summon. It's like watching him through stained glass, every inch of him a different, confusing color, his soul dissimilated into a million pieces that somehow manage to keep themselves together by a miracle she'll never be acquainted with.
Finally, with her straight posture and his slouched limbs and both their gazes locked, she finds strength enough to choke out one word.
"Don't."
He shakes his head. "It's the only way."
Before he can change his mind, he runs to the room's center. The control panels are alight with blue energy, and the buttons are inches from his fingers.
She flies to him, grabbing both his hands before he can do anything else. "Please." She's never trembled so hard in her whole life. "There has to be another way. We can go back out and fight. We can..." But she knows as much as he does that there is no other way. They cannot go back out there, not now. Not for three months at the very least.
He breaks her hold as though it were never anything to begin with, and the hand not taken by the fob watch cups her cheek. The warmth sends electricity down her spine.
Then, the fob watch-filled fist slams the smallest button on the panel.
"I'm not going to remember myself. I'm going to be whoever the machine decides to make me."
He draws in a deep breath, and for once in his life, he looks truly aged, a millennia-old man gazing down at her.
"I should remember you. I might not."
He hesitates at the uncertainty of that statement and she can see it ripping him apart. Though she's never been in this situation before, she's heard the stories. And now, with his palm warm against her shivering skin and his magnificent face marred by the tears blurring her vision, it feels dreadfully, desperately familiar. Like an old argument, not a new one brought forth in the midst of running and confusion and pain.
The smile falls away from his face in pieces. "I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry. I-"
There is more he ought to say, but she sees the way he forces himself to stop. As though if he thinks about it too much, if he lets all his doubts fill him, he won't be able to go through with it again. She can tell how much he's thinking, and the way he looks at her is filled with something akin to a promise to himself. Like he's trying to assure himself that it won't turn out like last time.
She wasn't with him last time, but she's going to make sure that this time he'll come back safe and sound.
Even if her heart is breaking in the process.
"Please-" But her voice is lost amidst the scream of grinding machines. His hand slips back to his side. He presses the fob watch into her grasp, and his fingers close tight around hers.
"You're glorious," he whispers. "I'm not going to know that, but don't you ever forget that."
Then, the cogs and gears of the Chameleon Arch cackle as they fall.
The time is 1923. The university is Oxford. And the country... Well, it's quite a long way from home.
The Arch has set them up as such− he is both a teacher and an artist. His classroom may be an average lecture hall, but he lines the walls with hundreds of colorful paintings. He spends his free time in a haze, part way between the dream he's putting down on the canvas and the reality the rest of the world is painting for him. She's his helper, his assistant. She watches him from afar and brings him what he needs. Paper, paint, charcoal, pencils, erasers, and all the trivial things like food and friendship. They work in harmony, the two of them. Just the two of them.
Every day he lectures his students on composition and color and the way art ought to be created. Then he sets them free, and they do as they please with their sketchbooks and their canvases. During this time, he retires to his office, where his own canvas is waiting. Where she is waiting too, but neither of them talk much. He's too busy creating, and she's too busy watching his profile as he creates.
Most of the time there's certainty.
But today there is apprehension.
He senses her moving in the background, and then he feels the heat of her body as she rests next to him. The canvas is still blank. It's been sitting blank for the last hour, white as his mind and untouched as the paint that lies before him.
He drags a hand through his hair, and leftover chalk dust from today's examination of complimentary colors leave his yellow locks full of white powder and standing on end. Like sunlight, only shiftier.
"I'm missing something," he mumbles. He places a finger on the canvas, but his mind is lost in the recesses of space.
She crouches down beside him, but she doesn't speak. She just stares at him with her sad eyes. He doesn't look at her, not if he can help it. Her eyes are always sad lately and he can't figure out why. But then, he's never been able to figure out women anyway. All piles of emotion and no outlets to calm them.
"There's something here that I'm not seeing." He squints at the canvas, searching for an image, but his thoughts trip over themselves. What could it be? What was he looking for?
"I'm sure you'll figure it out." Her voice is as it has been− quiet, whispery, full of something that he can't quite name.
He frowns at himself. First his art and now his assistant. Would he ever understand anything?
He wants to say that she is upset. But over what, he supposes he'll never know. She's been so tense lately, so solitary and melancholy. He doesn't think he's said or done anything that would hurt her, but he can't see what else might make her distressed.
After several moments of silence, he pushes himself away from what ought to have been his work. He brushes the last remains of chalk from his hands onto his apron. He wrenches that off too, and pulls his helper to her feet.
"Now," he declares, a grin blooming on his face, "let's see what the students have for me. I'm tired of sitting here in a depressive slump." He starts for the door. "Come along, Zelda."
She only nods and follows him.
He pauses at the threshold. "Hey, why don't we go out after class, you and I, go for a walk around the campus? We can make some coffee afterwards, if you like. I've got extra biscuits, if you'd rather have that."
She only smiles.
Every night, he wakes up screaming. And every night, he wakes her up too. She sleeps in the room next to him, and she hears him through the thin walls. His nightmares are haunting him, and they grow worse and worse the more time goes on. This midnight, her eyes are shut tight and she curls up into the covers, trying to tell herself that things will get better. That someday the horrors will leave him for good. But there's an impossibly heavy weight around her neck that pulses with her heart, and it always reminds her that the nightmares are never going away.
The sound of the door slipping open brings her out of her thoughts. A shadow glides across the hardwood and sinks down next to her bed. His hand touches her shoulder, flower−petal light, and he breathes her name into the quiet.
She loves the way he says her name. It makes her ache all over.
She stretches and pretends to yawn as though she's only just been roused from her sleep. She sits up and blinks, rubbing the phantoms from her eyes. The open door casts dim and distorted light into the room, and it haloes around his skeletal frame. Tears have left tracks on his face. His words are small and unbearably frightened.
"I had the dream again."
"Oh, you unfortunate man! Whatever am I going to do with you?" She motions for him to sit down beside her and he does. The bed creaks underneath him as he curls into a ball on top of all her quilts. She places a hand on his back and feels the way his spine is filled with tremors.
"You poor thing," she says, and she wraps her arms around him and hugs him tight. He chokes down sobs into her shoulder, and the embrace he gives her in return makes her heart both spiral and soar. The fob watch presses into her chest, and she hopes with all her might that he can't feel its presence there.
They stay like that, entwined in the dark, until the words she whispers into his ear finally calm him down. She gets up after a while and closes the door. She lies back down on her side, and he stays as is. They stare at the places where they think the other one rests and he tells her about the dream. That same nightmare that he's been having every night for two weeks now. The man made of shadows, and the fire that surrounds him, and the terror that he feels when he the dream lets him go. But he doesn't know why he should be afraid, and in the end, that makes him all the more terrified.
Eventually, he runs out of things to say and she runs out of words to comfort him with, so they fall into their own contemplative silences.
When he feels himself tiring again, he rolls of the bed, careful not to disturb his friend. Her breathing has evened long ago, and her eyes are closed. She looks almost peaceful. Almost, but there is one certain line of trouble that creases her forehead and a tightness about her limbs that suggest something else entirely.
Before he can stop himself, he leans over and kisses the top of her head. He perceives her relaxing and it brings a sparkle back into his eyes.
He glides across the hardwood and melts into the shadows.
Five troubled nightmares and productive days later, he bursts into the office, grinning so large his face may as well split open with the enormity.
She's halfway through some sort of mundane paper work, and she forces herself to get it organized before she speaks to him. His interruptions to her secretarial duties often leave her procrastinating more than she already does: she really needs to work on maintaining a proper schedule.
She's hunched over the mess, squinting down at dotted lines and signatures and miles and miles of useless text. A pen sticks out from behind her ear, and a paperclip is clenched between her teeth. Documents are spread across the desk, and she bunches them as best she can into the semblance of a pile. She sets the pen and paperclip down on the desk and then, only then, does she look up.
His whole body is smiling.
"They gave me the offer!" He sprints to her and grabs both her hands in his, narrowly avoiding tripping on the corner of the desk. The energy he emits threatens to topple her over and his laughter is so beautiful she can't help but smile along with him.
He bounces up and down on his feet, an uncontained explosion of excitement. "The gallery gave me an offer. I'm getting my own exhibition! Can you believe it? Finally, I can show my work to the world!"
She laughs, caught up in the moment, wrapped up in the joy. "Took you long enough!" She claps him on the back, and he hugs her breathlessly tight. When they break apart, the smile is still plastered to her face.
It stays there for the rest of the day.
They rush through class in a hurry, and he paints a beautiful landscape in a frenzy of brushstrokes. They talk the whole time, and when class has ended and the picture is done, she tells him it looks like a marvelous sunset.
He claps his hands together, and this time there is acrylic blended in with the chalk.
"No, my dear, it's a sunrise." He taps the tip of her nose with one long finger, and it leaves a bright red dab of paint behind. She tries to wipe it off with a cloth, but that spreads the color even farther over her skin. Then they share dumbstruck looks and all at once they're both laughing, so hard their ribs hurt and their lungs ache.
She doesn't wash the paint off her face and he never washes the paint off his hands, and so together they stand covered in color and laughing like the good old days. For one real and shining moment, the sadness is gone from both their gazes.
When they manage to catch their breaths again, he places the picture out of the way to dry, and she closes all the bottles and rinses all the brushes. He helps her clean up, and the studio looks a little tidier than it had been this morning.
They head off on their morning walk with more vigor than they ever have.
"A new day is coming," he tells her. "I can feel it."
She gives him a playful shove, and he nudges her with his elbow, and then they're racing down the Oxford halls with smiles on their faces.
Sometimes, Zelda dreams about a man with glowing red hair and glowing red eyes. Everything else about him is gone, hidden by mystery and shadow, buried by darkness and half-truths. Sometimes there's fire in her dream too. It burns behind the man like it's a part of him. She leaves the dream with terror, but it is a grounded terror that she knows deep down into the marrow of her bones.
And when she wakes in the morning to find the fob watch warm against her heart, to discover that her artist friend has already been up for an hour, with half-lidded, bagged eyes and the completed sketch of a man made of shadows lying open in front of him, and a hundred other paintings of his nightmares spread all over the walls, she wonders if he'll ever remember what he is truly fighting for.
She takes as many precautions as she can to make it look like it was done with bad intentions.
She waits several days, for a night when he forgets to lock the classroom door and she forgets to remind him about it. And at last, the time comes. The gallery exhibit is opening in a matter of days. Now is her chance. Now is her greatest chance. Her only chance.
She sneaks down the corridor and slips into the classroom with as much quiet as she can manage. A full moon hangs high in the night sky, and it watches her from the window as she pulls on her gloves.
She takes a deep breath, pulls out her knife, and starts with the first painting she can see.
It's a castle, high atop a sloping hill. The grass almost dances in the breeze, and the flowers almost bloom. If she closes her eyes she can feel the sunshine on her skin again. But then, all she really feels now is the watch around her neck and the pocket knife scrunched tight between her fingers.
She closes her eyes and makes the first cut.
The canvas falls to the floor in ribbons.
She moves to the next, and that is decimated in a matter of moments. A child's laughing face, gone.
The lake and the waterfall die third. They are followed by a horse running through a field, a marketplace filled to the brim with people, a mirror shining in the desert sun. Some of the canvases are still wet, and her ebony gloves smear with a rainbow of colors.
She saves the sunrise for last, and its demise leaves tears on her face.
She rips out all the sketchbook pages and grinds them down to crumpled remains under the heel of her boot. She takes extra care to smear the shadow−man's face all over the floor. She upends the pencil cases, snaps the brushes in two, and pours paint in trails all over the wreckage.
She leaves the wreckage bearing two sets of stains: the lines of color on her gloves and the tendril of sin burrowing into her consciousness.
He finds the wreckage the next morning. He cancels class and cries alone in his studio. She watches from the doorway, but she does not move to help him. She cannot move to help him, because if she breaks her position then she's going to start weeping alongside him.
The two of them stay late cleaning into the night. All the pictures are tossed and the supplies deemed unusable. They gather the students into the class and try to figure out who did it. Accusations are thrown, but no one steps forward, and they end the day at the same point they began it.
At an absolute stand−still.
The gallery gives him an extension, and the University helps him collect supplies. The return is hard, but when class starts back up again, it gets even harder.
He's an old man now, truly. He walks around in a haggard daze. He teaches his class in monotone, and he does not paint in his free time. He sits and stares at blank canvases, because now he knows what's missing.
When the nightmares plague him, he stays in his room and cries alone. But that isn't because he suspects her; on the contrary he suspects her the least of anyone. He cries alone because though he doesn't say it out loud, he acknowledges how much of a burden he places on her during the day.
He spends a fortnight this way. Then, he takes a breath and begins again.
He makes himself start all over. He will paint again, and draw again. He will give loud, exciting lectures and stain his hands with acrylic and charcoal and pastels.
And he will smile at his assistant. At his glorious assistant who has kept him company and tries to keep him sane.
If there is one good event to come out of the entire affair, it is that she leaves him nothing to go on− every piece of work he ever created has been thoroughly and utterly destroyed. There is nothing left of that period of his life, nothing left but scraps thrown in a garbage can and nightmares floating in his head.
He works late into the night now, and she works late alongside him, as she always does. The old mess is gone, replaced by the familiar array of wet canvases and paint−splattered aprons. This time around, he doesn't paint pictures of the home he can't remember. He paints of the places he lives in, the reality around him− Oxford in all its majesty, intermingled with the occasional scene of English countryside, or perhaps a second or two of the bustling London streets.
But neither of them can deny that the spark in his eyes has faded. He knows it. She knows it too, and this only makes her feel a thousand times worse.
"Maybe the gallery will let me back in some day, huh?" He stops painting for a moment to look at her, and she tries her best to look back. "Maybe," he continues," the culprit will step forward. Confess what they've done."
She sips the coffee and it burns her tongue. She stares into his eyes and they burn her soul. She looks away. She hurts now, everything hurts now.
"I just need absolution," he whispers. "I just need a reason to sleep well at night. I don't have a whole lot, Zelda. I don't have a family. I don't have many friends−" she winces at that, he asks why, and good Lord that coffee is boiling, but he continues all the same− "All I've got is this." He gestures around his studio, a vague sweep at a handful of canvases. "And even then… I'm a failure, I suppose."
Tears prick at her the corners of her vision, and before she can stop them, they run down her face. "Don't say that," she chokes out. "You're the most wonderful person I know."
He walks across the room and holds her face in both his hands. His fingers are calloused, rough but so gentle they set her body yearning. The paint and the chalk are cool, and she leans into their touch, hoping they might soothe her face. Her cheeks boil ruby with her own blushing.
He runs a thumb along her cheekbone. "You shouldn't cry for me. I'm just a silly old artist."
"Yes, but you're my artist." She smiles and between all the tears, quick, quiet laughter slips from her throat. "My brilliant, heavenly artist."
"My dearest Zelda." He presses chapped lips to the top of her head, then he presses his forehead to hers. They are so close their breaths mingle and mix and their heartbeats pound in sync. His eyes surround her, and she lets them fill her to the brim. Blue irises, her methodical mind notes, blue as warm summer days and sunlight on algae−darkened water.
"There's paint on your face," she mutters. She absentmindedly reaches up to touch it, a green smudge under his eye. Her finger remains on his cheek. Then something daring seizes her, and she reaches up to the chalk and paint that has dried into his hair. She runs her hand through it, and her fingers stay tangled against his scalp. Though she is capable, she does not remove them.
She never wants to move again.
He smiles a secretive sort of smile, like moonlight on midnight air. "I suppose there is."
Then he's so close she can't keep up with him. And in the span of one tremulous, nervous heartbeat, his lips brush smoothly against hers.
He jumps back instantly, eyes wide. He touches his lips as though he can't believe what he'd just done.
He opens his mouth to apologize, but she flings herself at him before he could speak. Their lips crash together so hard their teeth grind. She doesn't pull back, she refuses to pull back. All her grief and all her joy, all her pain and all her longing fly out of her and into their kiss. He accepts it, all of it, though he will never understand it.
The only thing he really understands is that having Zelda in his arms is glorious beyond belief.
Outside, snow taps on the window pane and begs to come in.
Inside, they love like they sin− terrified and amazed and breathless all the while.
She wakes up in a tangle of sheets, with warm, strong arms hugging her close.
They are laying together in the quiet, simple and content. The warm and reflective glow of dust specks caught in threads of light from the fireplace scatter radiance through the room and dissolve the midnight into shimmers of distant stars locked tight away by frosted glass and mahogany wood and velvet curtains.
For a moment, she is at peace.
Then she realizes the fob watch is still hanging on her neck. The metal is so hot it seems to scald her. She jumps out of bed, out of his arms, away from the sanctuary and into the chill. She pulls on her clothes, and he, brought awake by the sound of her scurrying, watches her pull herself together. He lays lazy on his side, and his smile glistens from behind the tangles of hair trailing into his face.
"Where are you going?"
She tries to give him a steady answer as she does up the buttons on her shirt. "A walk."
"I'll come with you."
She wants to protest, but he is too beautiful to deny, and so she pulls on her skirt, her shoes, her coat, and she waits for him. He is done tidying himself a few moments later, and together they walk out the door hand in hand.
Snow falls outside in thick flakes. The world has turned ivory and sparkling in a matter of hours. He laughs and drags her through all the drifts, catching as many flakes on his tongue as he can. She stays behind and watches, lips in a tight line, hands buried in the depths of her coat.
When he asks her if she'd brought any gloves, she shoves her numb fists deeper into her pockets and tells him they're dirty. He doesn't even notice the despair lingering on her face.
The fob watch lays heavy over her heart.
The silver chain remains hidden under her shirt, tight around her neck, a noose around her neck, and the fob watch dangles where it has always been, a dagger poised above her heart. With every step she takes, it jangles against her skin, a constant reminder of all that had happened and all that would happen.
Two and a half months spent and gone. The three month line looms on the horizon, and she can't stop contemplating what will happen when he finally asks her about the trinket tied round her neck. When he stops to question her. It's all going to come crashing down, that much she knows, and she's so afraid to think about it.
She rushes to him and plants herself in the doorway of the studio.
His back is to her. He's bent over his work. There is a particularly copious amount of paint in his hair, and his tangles have been dried into spikes of blue and purple and green. There's even a streak of red caught in a particular golden lock, and it runs from the center his head and falls into his face. He brushes it away, and when he turns around to mix another shade of purple, he finds her there.
The brush falls back into the holder. She thinks of telling him that it'll dry out and become unusable if he does that, but she holds her tongue between her teeth.
He turns around to face her, grinning like an eager child. He is the usual disarray− a myriad of different hues and shades of acrylic with patches of the real man peeking out from underneath. "What is it, Zel?"
She shakes her head. "Nothing much." She pulls a chair away from one of the corners of the room and plops it down beside him. She sits, and she stares at him. "I was just thinking. It's been almost three months since we started working here."
"They've been the most amazing three months of my entire life." He lays a hand on her shoulder and she falls into his chest, pulling him close. She breathes in the smell of paint like an old friend. The feel of it smearing against her face has never been more enjoyable.
She rests her head in the crook of his shoulder, sighing. "Even with that unfortunate incident?"
He ruffles her hair affectionately. "You know I can pull through anything." He winks and kisses her cheek. "Especially if I have you by my side."
She laughs, not only at him, but at the absurdity of the entire situation. How little he knows of the affairs of the world! She wishes she could be so splendidly naïve.
His fingers are picking at the bun in her hair. "I mean it! With every bone in my body. With all my heart and soul."
She kisses his collarbone.
She spends her evening smiling and washing paint out of her hair.
She holds the book tight in her hands as she reads. It's beat up and old beyond recognition. The pages are yellowed and dog−eared, tea−stained and coffee−stained and decayed down in places where her thumbs have spent so many hours residing. She sits now as she did when she was a child− enrapt and unbreakable in her reading habits. This is the one book she would fight her way through a burning library to save.
The cover reads Le Morte D'Arthur.
When her eyes ache and her brain can no longer keep up with the words, she lies back in her armchair. Her eyes flicker shut, and she contemplates many subjects. She spends a half hour dwelling on heroes and kings, fights to the death, battles fought and won.
Then something else occurs to her. Something as petrifying as men with red eyes and something as comforting as men with red paint in their hair.
Perhaps Oxford is their Avalon, and some day they're going to return out of the fog like a king and his lady come home again, to defend their country once more.
But there's no perhaps to be found here. One week remains, one simple and dreadful and fantastic week. Then she would bring out the fob watch, and all would be running and confusion and pain again.
On an impulse more animal that human, she rips the watch out from under her shirt. She tears it off her neck and flings it at the wall as hard as she can.
It falls to the floor with a clatter.
As soon as it hits the ground, reality hits her mind in a sickening rush, and she springs out of the chair and runs to it. She picks it up off the ground and cradles it between her fingers, desperately searching for some sort of mark she's no doubt left on it.
The surface of the watch is unchanged− still silver as fish scales disappearing in the ocean tides, still warm as the blood that beat through its owner's veins, still the most damnable object she's ever had the misfortune to be holding.
When Zelda doesn't suffer from dreams about a shadowed man and roaring flames, she dreams of that final night before all the world dissolved. She has nightmares of blue control panels and bodies half−hidden by generators. She dreams of a man who holds a fob watch made of silver mist and half−truths, and she dreams of the weapon of his own creation that takes him away from her. The Chameleon Arch that latches itself onto him and drains him off all his thoughts, of all his mind, of all his soul. In the end, when he's stopped writhing in pain long enough to look at her, his eyes are devoid of the gaze they once held.
A new man enters the world like a phoenix hot out of the ashes, a shell of the former life that he once was. He manages to smile at her, with that lovely, bright smile of his, right before he collapses onto the floor in a pile of sore limbs and sweat−soaked clothes.
In her nightmares, her true nightmares, she watches over and over again as her companion rearranges himself into a different man. They both have the same soaring spirit, but the fighter is gone and the artist in standing in his place.
And then it's her turn to wake up screaming.
They are running through the rain, and it soaks them to the bone. Cobblestones pound underneath their feet and their laughter sends the silence hurtling off into the night like doves in motion.
Her hair, freed from its usual bun, falls down past her shoulder blades in yellow waves. Her stockings have ripped where they cling to the soles of her feet, and her mud−splattered shoes dangle in her hands, discarded long ago for the feel of cold puddles and rough gravel on her bare feet.
He chases after her, just as wild. His shoes have somehow managed to remain in their rightful place, but the buttons on his shirt are only halfway done, and when she turns back to watch him run, the contours of his chest tempt her from underneath far−too−thick fabric. Perhaps all the buttons will be undone later, she decides. Then she turns away, smiling to herself.
The rain is almost as heavy as the air now, so they slip off down one of the side roads and take shelter under the corner of a ragged rooftop. They're still miles to go before they get home, and by this point the exhaustion of a late night spent running almost manages to bother them.
Almost, but not quite.
They huddle for warmth, his arms wrapped around her waist, her face buried into his collarbone. He sighs, calm and content, and the noise of it gets lost in the maze of raindrops falling all around them.
He speaks before he realizes what he's actually saying.
His grip wraps around her tighter. He's not sure why, but a sudden shudder of panic rises in his heart, a throbbing like there's something missing and he doesn't know what. It's larger than a lack of painting ideas, larger even than that sad look that falls in Zelda's eyes when she thinks he's not looking. It feels like part of him is gone, like something in his mind is locked away in a deep, dark box. Like all the happiness he's ever had is slipping through his fingers and tumbling into the twilight. Like there's no time left, or there's never been any time from the very beginning, and it frightens him more than all of his nightmares combined.
But of course, you can't track down what you're not even sure you're missing.
For a moment, he considers telling her about it. But she'd peg him a madman, and besides, that's not really what he wants to say.
What he has to tell her is something else entirely.
He whispers it into her hair, his lips pressed against her scalp.
"Marry me."
She only smiles.
Three months, he told her. By then the shadows would be ghosts of long−forgotten fairytales, the threat no more than a story that would die out beside ancient campfires. Three intricately simple months was all they needed for the dust to settle. Then they could return. Then they could try again. The nightmares would be gone, the pain would be gone, and their kingdom would be safe once more.
She stares down long and hard at the treasure in front of her. The first is a ring, gold and glowing as hope. An engagement ring. It's nothing much save a plain band, but that's all he's ever been able to afford. His paintings are complexities, but his mind likes designs less burdensome, and his thin wallet likes them even less so. Regardless, it is still the only reason she still smiles when she wakes up in the morning with him sleeping by her side.
The other object in her lap is a watch. Silver, shiny, the lid entwined with curling decorations of a language she'll never know. It is warm in her lap, always warm, but she's never been able to figure out whose body heat is keeping it that way. As it sits out in the open, freed from being hidden under her shirt for the first time in ages, the shadows in the room seem lengthened, closer. The light appears to be just a bit dimmer and the darkness just a bit stronger.
If she closes her eyes and concentrates, sometimes she swears she can hear it whispering to her.
The chain that holds it around her neck curls about her wrist. Unlike the watch itself, the links are cold and lifeless.
Three months, he told her.
But today marks the seventh month they've been staying here.
She's never been guiltier in her entire life.
He stands in the window of the cathedral. His clothes are a little more pressed, and his smile a tad bit brighter today. He's looking out the window, watching something that she can't quite make out from where she stands several feet behind him. He hums casually, and he ponders casually, and she finds herself wondering how anyone in this world can be so lackadaisical when she is so tense and terribly frightened.
She tries to calm herself and fails. Instead, stale thoughts crescendo inside her head.
As she studies him, she finds herself thinking of a different time. A different church where the sunlight isn't tainted by multicolored glass. They'd stood together in that window, holding hands and smiling, no troubles in the world to bring them down. But that was then, and now he is by himself, embraced by false light and false identity.
All the troubles of the world are crashing down on her instead, and they all gather themselves at the fob watch suspended over her breaking heart.
Nine months it's been, and if she doesn't tell him soon, she's never going to be able to.
She longs so much to throw away all her worries and join him. She wants to lose herself in the moment. But not just one moment− she wants to be like him, the old man gone forever and the new man never the wiser to the true soul that lies in masquerade beneath.
He extends a hand to her. "Come and join me."
She's too busy looking down at her hand. At the wedding ring, and the way the sunlight fills it up, and the way it lays against her skin, sweet and smooth. Like paradise.
But it is a paradise soon to be discarded.
She can't bring herself to look at him. "Maybe in a minute, love."
The fire is dead, but no one makes a move to revive it. The silence is drawn taught, but no one offers a word to break it. The fob watch rests exposed in the middle of the table, and the both of them can't stop staring at it. One stares in guilt, and the other stares in pain.
Finally, one of them gains enough courage to speak. His voice is cracked and shaking, and it chokes its way out with drowning syllables and the last vestiges of a laugh that both of them know has never been real.
"You're joking."
She shakes her head and her fingers tighten into fists. "I'm not."
"But that's imposs−"
She gains the wisdom to look at him, and the agony reflected in her eyes causes every argument he's had prepared to come to an end before he can voice a single one. "Nothing is impossible. You say that yourself, all the time."
His fist slams the table, but he has good reason to make the watch rattle and shake like it does. "You expect me to just… believe you? Like it's that simple?"
She swallows the lump in her throat. "Yes. You have to."
His face falls into his hands. "But I can't be…"
"Listen to me," she sobs, struggling not to shout, trying her hardest not to beg and plead. "Listen, please, because I know you're not. You think you're an artist because that's what you asked the Chameleon Arch to make you. But you're not an artist. You're a hero, Link."
He jumps up from the table with mad eyes. "Stop calling me that!"
She pretends she didn't hear that. "You're the Hero of Time. You're the protector and peace−keeper of a faraway place called Hyrule. When I was little, you sealed away the magic of a villain named Ganondorf. And we thought everything was alright. But there were rumors that he was returning." Her voice cracks and quavers. "The soldiers, they came after you. They said the only way to prevent Ganondorf from coming back and destroying everything was if…"
She's quiet now, so quiet. And there, as the truth falls from her mouth, it comes back to him slowly, the missing pieces. They trickle into place. His muscles tighten and they hurt. None of this should be real. None at all, but it feels so life−like even if he can't really remember it.
"If what?" he prompts, and he can hardly hear himself speaking.
She shudders in her seat. "The only way to prevent his return was if someone killed you. And you did die, in a way, because you and I fled to your hideout, and you wiped all your memories. You stored them here−" she pointed− "inside this watch."
His heart is comatose on information overload, so his mind tries a different tactic. "You're insane, Zelda. Completely and incurably insane."
She can't look at him any longer. But she can't look at the fob watch either, and so she closes her eyes and forces herself to keep breathing. "I know," she says, and oh, how she means it. "And I'm sorry. But I've already let you stay here too long. We have to go home now."
He blinks several times. He tries not to sound so harsh, but he does anyway. "You're despicable," he snarls.
Tears start to roll down her face. "I know."
It takes him a minute to realize the enormity of what he has said. He rushes to her and grabs both her shoulders, turns her to face him. Her eyes open and she ascends into his arms, a sobbing, trembling wreck.
"I'm sorry." He breathes it over and over, chanting it like a mantra. "I'm sorry, forgive me, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it."
"You're going to be so mad at me," she laughs, "when you come back."
"I could never be mad at you," he says to her gently through a haze of tears. "Never."
"Even if I'm the one who destroyed all your paintings?"
He freezes instantaneously. His breathing stops and the tears cease falling. His mouth hangs agape. He can't even stutter out a response.
She talks into the collar of his shirt. "You told me that if some of your real self bled through, I wasn't supposed to let anyone know. Your paintings− I should have stopped you from the beginning, but you were so happy…"
"And if I go back?" he asks in a voice tumultuous and panicked. "If I believe that everything you say is true, and I go back to being a hero, to being… Link−" he tastes the name on his tongue like half−melted snowflakes, and he hates the way it feels so natural in his mouth− "will I be happy anymore?"
She can't say anything to that. She ran out of words to comfort him with a long time ago. She senses reality gripping him tight, and his pain becomes her pain as well. That poor man. That poor, wonderful man.
She loathes what she's done to him.
"We were going to be married," he says, and it's desperate. "You and I, Zel, together forever. But now what do I do? Give up the man that I am? Go back to being a traveler, a fighter, a blood−bringer and a death−dealer?"
"You're a hero. You're a savior. And I'm staying by your side. Until the end of my days, I promise. I'm never going to leave you."
She forces herself to move away from him. She picks the watch up off the table and holds it in her palm. She's shaking so hard that she can't breathe and the crying has stopped, but somehow she finds her voice anyway. "You're brilliant." She smiles through the heartbreak. "You're brilliant, and heavenly, and don't you ever forget that."
He watches her with eyes like illusions shattered. "Is this the only way? Is there no other alternative?"
She peers down and the fob watch pulsing like a heartbeat in her palm. Her world spins. It is time.
She sucks in a great lungful of air. "If there was another way, I wouldn't be telling you any of this."
He steps so close to her that their bodies touch. He presses a finger to the fob watch like it's a blank canvas just waiting to be filled, or a bad drawing waiting to be painted over. "Fine," he says, and for a moment the imprint of a hero is reflected in his words. "If you say that my death and his life is the only answer, then I believe you. Go ahead. I'm ready."
She looks up at him. His eyes glow in the warped light, more tired and more alive than she's ever seen them, more terrified and more courageous than they've ever been. His hair is still full of paint from this morning, and his skin is luminous and lovely. He is almost calm, almost peaceful, almost prepared for the end that lies before him.
Almost, but not quite.
"You're braver than us," she whispers. "You're braver than the both of us combined. You're a glorious man, and I swear I'm never going to forget you."
He stiffens, but he swallows down the hurt and grins like he always used to.
"I love you, Zelda."
"I love you too, Link."
She closes her eyes, presses her lips to his, and opens the fob watch.