So, what am I doing this chapter? To be perfectly honest, I still have no freaking clue. Making it up on the spot it is!

This may not make sense, because I'm writing during break at tennis camp. It's hot and I've been running around for an hour and I may be dying slowly, I don't know.

Disclaimed.

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12: Ink
It tells the story he'll never speak aloud.

Link has never spoken a word, in all the years Zelda has known him. He grunts and chuckles, but other than that he's completely silent. He could be deaf, or mute, or just shy, but she's never asked and he's never explained.

Now she sits at the desk at their tattoo parlour, crunching numbers while Link deals with customers. Those that notice the matching symbols on their hands assume they're just another pair of tattoos. It's the perfect cover, really.

To be honest, the Triforce marks on their hands aren't tattoos at all. They're brands. Zelda prefers to hide hers beneath elegant gloves; Link displays his with a sort of macabre pride for all they've been through and survived.

The Triforce Project…

It was a good idea in principle, Zelda reflects. They all signed up for it; her, Link and Ganon. The third name sends a shudder through her. They all had their reasons, too. Zelda wanted the wisdom to aid the people, Ganon wanted the power to protect the Gerudo, and Link… well, she's not sure what he wanted courage for. All she knows is that they signed up, even if they weren't told the whole truth.

It was a… genetic manipulation project, to put it simply. The technicians in charge messed with their muscle mass, their mental capacity, their emotions… Zelda isn't certain they're completely human at this point. Ganon turned into a hulking beast, massive and utterly deadly. Zelda's mental abilities were pushed far beyond the norm, granting her superhuman intelligence. Link became almost incapable of fear.

Considering their 'enhancements', perhaps it made sense that when Ganon went berserk it was left to Link and Zelda to kill him. Even so, Zelda still wakes up screaming some nights, and though there's never any evidence she's certain that some nights Link doesn't sleep at all.

Link never speaks, and neither of them have ever even tried to explain their part in the near-world-ending disaster the Triforce Project snowballed into. Even so, they have their ways of reminding themselves. Zelda braids golden threads into her hair, like the strings they gave her to hold it back when they ran their experiments. Link has, with help from their tattooist friend Sheik, written their tale in inked images across his skin. There's a chain inked around his left wrist, a beautifully done tattoo of a wolf and a dove fighting a boar that covers the entirety of his back, the Master Sword and a Hylian shield crossed over his chest, and others that Zelda has never even seen.

He likes his secrets, does Link, but that's hardly uncommon in their circle of friends. Zelda has secrets of her own, though she wouldn't be entirely surprised if the others have figured them all out by now; she's clever, but she isn't the best at hiding things.

Zelda has her own ink; she keeps a diary. She's kept it for years, ever since the project first started. At first, it was just observations on what was happening to her; little things, like memory and intelligence seeming slightly better. But as time passed, it became less about the project and more about her. What she thought and felt, what she wanted to achieve, and a million other things in between. Now she tracks her days and designs tattoos, and occasionally sketches her friends and family.

During the project, she sometimes forgot. Now she's determined to remember.

Link waves a hand in front of her face, smiling when he catches her attention. The chain on his wrist catches her eye, and she fights the temptation to run her fingers along the ink; Sheik is good, so good the chain seems almost real. Zelda is sure there's some sort of magic involved in Link's tattoos; the positioning seems to shift ever-so-slightly whenever she looks at them.

The ink is a constant reminder to them both, the story they'll never tell. But, really, they don't need it so long as they have each other.

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Yikes it's short. Cut me some slack, yeah? I'm so fucking dead right now I can't even think. With luck, this will be the only time it's so painfully short.

The Triforce Project is an idea that's been floating around my head for a while. If anyone's interested, I might do more.

Next time: Balcony
It's like something out of a fairytale.

See ya~!

-Bird