A/N: Sorry for the tremendous wait. Who's ready for misery! YAAAAAAY!
Eleven
She dreamed they were back in Hyrule. She dreamed she was bright, that her skin was a sunbeam and her eyes were stars. She dreamed he was caught in her brilliance, suspended between her and the world, black as ink, a shadow ringed in spangled, glittering eclipse, and he was basking in her light.
It was almost painful returning to so much darkness after that.
His arms closed around her gently when he felt her stir, and she swallowed down bitter, disappointed tears built in her throat as she thought of home.
She whispered, "How long have I been gone?"
"Nearly two days."
The hunting parties would be out looking for her by now, flooding every corner of the kingdom with lantern light and torches. She wondered how well the Sheikah had hid their tracks when they left. She hadn't been paying attention. Had they closed and latched the balcony doors? Had she snapped bits of vine from ivy? Had her shoes left marks in the courtyard? Beyond the city walls? Straight into the heart of Kakariko? She doubted they would have been so careless. But if their city was really impregnable, they wouldn't have to resort to such secrecy. She couldn't stay and just hope her soldiers never stumbled upon it.
He kissed her temple at her silence, too lingering, too sweet, before he echoed her thoughts.
"We need to get you home."
She stared out at darkness, at a filmy cloud of mist speckled in cavern glow. She wanted to drill a hole in the ceiling and let in the light, or better, sink her kingdom into the earth and stay with him in perpetual night.
She whispered, the words escaping her lips before she could process them, "Come with me."
His lips curved into a smile beside her ear. "I'll always be with you," he promised again, guiding the back of her hand to brush above his heart. Above where he could feel hers beating beside it. "Just here."
Not good enough, she wanted to spit. But she swallowed it down like a stone lodged in her throat. He kissed the side of her neck, pressed his lips to her jaw, trying to reassure her. But it all felt empty.
She could only imagine one scenario where she could leave him, and he wouldn't help her enact it. She was going to have to get the answers she needed from someone else. And that meant lying to him to do it. Questions of loyalty and morality aside, that was going to be another issue entirely. Her heart would literally give her away.
And as for the rest… he had seen fit to lie to her when he thought it was best. She supposed this just made them even.
"Don't do this to yourself," he whispered, pained, misinterpreting her scheming and worry for dread. "Please. I've made my choices. And I don't regret any of them."
"How can you say that?" she demanded, turning in his arms. "Look at where we are. Look at what's about to happen to you. You could have been safe. If you hadn't—if I hadn't drawn you out—"
"And never heard you say my name?" he returned, just as adamantly, and then, eyes flickering to her mouth, leaning closer to impart more comfort, or to take it, whispered, "Never touched you?"
"No," she snapped, shoving him away before he could pacify her and sweeping to her feet. She meant to say more, meant to argue, but suddenly she was gulping air and fighting tears, and all she could manage was a stubborn shake of her head. "No."
She turned, marching towards the cliff's edge even though she knew she could never get down on her own—knowing that he knew, and that he would be there in an instant. She just about walked off the ledge into the void when his hand found her arm, and he guided her down from their hiding place in vibrating silence. His fingers brushed hers, once they were on solid ground—a question, or a request. Her mind was abuzz with bitter feelings and nerves, and she didn't know how to answer.
"You know what I did regret?" he murmured, threading his fingers slowly with hers, slipping and nudging, until she finally reciprocated. "That I didn't tell you how beautiful you were, or how full of passion, or kind, or ridiculously clever. That I didn't tell you how in love with you I was."
Her face crumpled. "You're breaking my heart. Can you hear that, too?"
But he just smirked at her, drawing her closer with a warm hand on her neck, and she fell into his embrace despite all her intentions to be difficult.
"I'm so sorry," she choked out against his shoulder.
It wasn't just an apology for her temper. She was apologizing for all of it. Apologizing for the way she hadn't left well enough alone; for the way she always pushed him too far; for the way her curiosity and selfishness had ruined his future.
Apologizing for what she was about to do.
He held her until she had no more tears left to cry, and then coaxed her face up to taste the last bit of salt on her lips.
"Maybe, when you're queen," he murmured, smiling softly as he led he back toward the village, "you can build a castle here. Just above us. Raise your children in it. And if they're anything like you, they'll stumble across these caverns when you let them out to play and never turn back."
"I was a very well-behaved child."
"I find that hard to believe."
She let herself imagine it. She imagined white spires framed by waterfalls and green slopes, hidden away in secret places instead of shining over Hyrule like a beacon. She imagined an elaborate bedchamber that she never used. She imagined little princes and princesses, with eyes that shone red in moonlight, whose governesses could never keep track of them because they seemed to be able to disappear in the smallest corner of shadow. It made her want to laugh and cry at once.
Back in the village, two figures cast in waterglow waited at the mouth of the path. Robbie, she surmised from the way he lurched to his feet at the sight of them. Purah was with him, probably dragged along for moral support. He was waiting in taut, miserable anticipation, and it sent schemes whirling in her mind.
She gave Link a sad smile. "You need to talk to him."
He nodded, but his eyes lingered too long. It made her wonder if he sensed her deception. It made her stomach knot. But she was a princess, and far too accustomed to wearing a mask. It startled her how easily her lips turned up, how easily her eyes shone kind and empathetic. How easily she lied.
She untangled her fingers from his and crossed the space to Robbie, offering him that same, false smile, and pulled him into an embrace with her arms around his neck. Then she leaned her mouth close to his ear and whispered, "Stall him."
He was a little wide-eyed when she pulled away. She squeezed his arms, and then glanced back at Link.
"We'll wait at the house," she hinted, taking Purah by the arm and ignoring her sputtered protests. She waited until she could hear them murmuring, until she could hear the sigh of a half-hearted argument, of an apology, of forgiveness. And then the second they were out of earshot, Zelda held her eyes meaningfully and whispered, "I need your help."
Purah pulled her along faster.
"What's your plan?" she asked as they crossed the threshold, snapping the door shut behind them. Zelda took a calming breath before she dared to tell her.
"There's a way to sever our connection," she pressed, "isn't there? A way to break the bond, so he won't be my Shadow anymore?"
Her eyes went wide as saucers. "He agreed to that?"
"No," she admitted, sighing. "He told me it was impossible."
Purah frowned. "I see. Well, it's not. But we didn't suggest it for a reason. We knew he wouldn't want it."
"But it would spare him," she challenged, searching for her eyes, and they both frowned harder when she found them. "It would spare him, wouldn't it?"
It took Purah a long time to answer, and when she did, the turmoil was making her eyes water.
"Yes. Yes, of course it would spare him."
She sighed, shutting her eyes as though she could unsee the betrayal she was abiding. "Then you have to tell me how."
"Do you even know what you're saying? What you're asking?" She checked. Her voice had gotten away from her and her teeth were set. Her fists clenched and unclenched again, as though she were grabbing at frustrated arguments and they were wriggling free. "He won't be your Shadow anymore. He won't be himself anymore."
"I know that."
"He'll be devastated. You don't know what it means to him."
"And if I don't? If I leave things as they are and I go back to Hyrule, what happens to him then?"
Her lips pressed into a line and her eyes strayed, and she didn't answer. Zelda didn't fault her for it. It was a testament to her loyalty. A testament to the differences between them. She knew what she was asking her to do, and it made her throb all over. Because Link didn't want it. But people didn't always want what was good for them.
She hugged her arms, loosing a shuddering sigh. "I just… don't know what else to do."
Even though Purah hadn't moved, it was suddenly hard for Zelda to make her out. It was like she was melting away. Melting into the shadows, where she wouldn't have to stomach being exposed.
"The ritual can only be perform by three people proficient in High Magic," she said. "The Elders."
She swallowed misgivings, trembling at the way they slithered down. "Then I need to find some way to speak with them—privately, without arousing suspicion. And pray that they won't fight me."
"They can't refuse you," she whispered, like it was a confession. "You have the right."
"Then that just leaves Link. If he catches wind of this—"
"He'll do something stupid, like abscond with you back to Hyrule and let the others hunt him down rather than let himself be Unbound. I know."
She honestly hadn't even thought of that. It made her stomach clench.
"I don't understand," she breathed, staring into shadows, into oblivion, where Purah's eyes should have been. Letting the nothingness turn her numb. "How could you all let him suffer when you had this option?"
"Because," she said, her eyes, red as blood moons, rising up to meet hers in the dark, "we don't believe in stripping someone of who they are."
Her brow furrowed. "Even if it means—"
"Wait."
She did, nearly holding her breath. A moment later the door unlatched, Link and Robbie slipping unobtrusively inside. Purah's eyes held hers in warning.
"Get out of the shadows, Purah," Link scoffed quietly. "You look like a ghost."
"I'll find Impa, then," she murmured, setting her eyes to the floor and heading for the door. "She'll want to be there when you go."
Feeling light and shadow drain around her in equal measure, Zelda realized she didn't know which of them she meant.
But then the door closed again, and Link's fingers brushed penitently at her waist, and Robbie busied himself with looking preoccupied with something in the corner—wanting to afford them the illusion of privacy, but not quite able to pry himself away.
"I still can't believe you came all this way," he murmured, smiling. Because of course he would smile at her, now of all times. He dipped his forehead against hers, nudging her gently, meeting her eyes. Hesitantly daring to hope. His voice was just above a whisper. "Maybe… someday you'll find this place again. Maybe I'll dream you to life."
She didn't answer. She was too afraid of giving herself away with a clumsy, half-hearted reply. Her fingers dug into his arms. Maybe he wouldn't even want her find Kakariko again, after this was over. Maybe he would forget her. Or maybe he would never forget, and that prospect scared her even worse.
Robbie met her eyes through the glow, curious. Wondering what she was scheming, and wise enough not to ask. Link weaved his fingers with hers, smile fading as she stonewalled all his efforts to comfort her, and tugged her gently towards the door.
"Let's get you home," he whispered.
He led her through the pitch black streets, up into the narrow corridors that snaked through the stone that was the ingress between their worlds. Her blood pounded hotter and thicker until she thought she might choke on it, until she thought she might be sick, until she thought she wouldn't have the fortitude to go through with it. But then she would meet Robbie's eyes in the dark, probing for answers she couldn't give, and she would remember the vision. She would remember the alternative. And it burned hotter than her guilt.
It was dark as they stepped through the atrium and onto the stone table. But she was getting rather good at being blind, and when she felt Link draw up short beside her, she instinctively took a step back and closer. The blue glow bloomed out of the orbs, revealing what he had seen: a handful of Elders standing in their path, the old woman she had met before at the forefront, and Purah and Impa with them.
"We would speak with her," the woman said—the foremost Elder, it seemed. "Alone."
"I'm still her Shadow," Link argued cautiously. "What could you possibly have to discuss with her that I shouldn't hear?"
The Elder extended her hand, expectant, and Link defiantly closed his grip. But Zelda touched his arm.
"I'll go with her," she whispered. "It will be fine."
His brow furrowed as she let him go, as she stepped out from his protection, eyes clouding with doubt. Robbie drew up beside him, crossing his arms, looking similarly perplexed. She crossed the table and breathed, too afraid to look back. Too afraid to meet his eyes and find distrust welling in them.
Impa and Purah stayed behind as the Elders led her through an alcove into a separate smaller chamber. They turned to face her as she entered in a smothering semicircle. Their stark hair and crimson eyes were harsh in the glow, cutting and bitter, as though they all remembered a forgotten history of Hyrule that she did not. It made her stomach twist, even as she raised her neck higher to address them.
"My granddaughter says you wish to speak with us," the Elder said, flatly.
Zelda swallowed, ignoring her irreverence. "Yes. I know that you have the power to sever the bond between Shadow and host. I ask that you do that for us now."
"So it's true," another murmured, disturbed, but the old woman held up her hand for silence. Her eyes were wider; it wasn't an expression of disgust, or anger. Just shock.
"Has he displeased you in some way?" she pressed. "Harmed you?"
She gave her head a firm shake. "No. He's been nothing but loyal."
"Then why would you deal with him so cruelly?"
The question stung like a nettle. She wanted to crumble—wanted to throw herself at the old woman's feet and give way to tears, beg her for another option, beg her to let him go. She fisted her hands at her side instead.
"He'll suffer if I don't."
"He'll suffer if you do."
"I have the right," she insisted, working so her voice wouldn't quaver. Working so she wouldn't burst into frustrated tears. "You can't deny me this. I will have him at my side, or not at all."
"But do you know what you're asking?" she challenged. "Would you know yourself if you were no longer a princess? A woman? A daughter? Would you fear someone who could take those things away from you?"
She swallowed the quadrant of her heart that was lodged in her throat, and terror, and guilt. It went down like bile. She wanted to gag on it.
"He'll adapt," she whispered. "We both will."
"You will not be swayed from this?"
"No."
They frowned amongst themselves, and Zelda didn't breathe, because she was sure if she did that it would stick with a terrible sound in her mouth and she wouldn't be able to hold back the grief that was beating at the gates.
"An Unbinding is complicated," the Elder sighed. "Binding a Shadow to a host is like tearing down a dam and letting the water rush out. It is the natural progression of things. But to undo it is to build a dam through a river that won't stop flowing."
"I see," she breathed, though she really didn't. But the thought of it made her tremble. "What must I do?"
"The burden falls to us. You need only look him in the eye and tell him in your own voice that you wish it."
Of course that was the price: facing him, and admitting her betrayal.
The Elder gestured, palm up, towards the door. An invitation and a challenge at once.
Face him, if you have the courage. If you can stomach the look in his eyes.
She wanted to run out of the room and into his arms. She wanted to gasp into his ear that she would run away with him, that they could keep running and disappear into shadow forever. She would give up her kingdom and he would give up his people, and they would start over on distant shores. She wanted to smile and tell him that had been her plan all along. She wanted to lie.
But she didn't have that luxury anymore.
She turned and followed the gesture out of the alcove, across the stone table in the watery glow of the orbs, moving with leaden feet towards where Link and the others were waiting. Purah was collapsed on herself where she stood, like someone had strapped the great one-eyed door onto her back, and Impa, standing beside her, offered no comfort. Her somber expression said she knew what they were planning. Her fists were clenched so tight where they were folded over her arms that her knuckles were turning white. Robbie's brow was lined with worry. And Link was so stone still and expressionless she couldn't read him at all, and that scared her worse than anything.
When she finally drew up to face him, it took everything she could muster to meet his eyes.
"What's going on, Zelda?" he asked, too quietly, as two of the Elders stationed themselves to flank him.
She took a breath, readying herself to plunge in the knife. Readying herself to confirm everything she knew he must have already begun to suspect. Readying herself to destroy the last bit of good faith he had in her. But there was really no preparing herself for something like that, was there?
"I don't want you to be my Shadow anymore," she said, breathless, her voice possessed of neither power nor conviction, watching his eyes change, watching him veer towards belief in something he had promised himself couldn't be so. "I told them to unbind us."
His voice was just a whisper, laced in shadow and belonging to shadow, driving back every ounce of light she had left.
"You did what?"
She took a breath—to take it all back, to apologize, to explain—but she couldn't form the words, her vision swimming and hazy as the betrayal scrawled all over his face knocked the air from her lungs. The Elders each placed a hand on his shoulders, leading him backward. He let himself be pulled away. He looked numb, hardly reacting as they eased him to his knees.
"You knew," Robbie breathed, suddenly trembling, meeting Purah's eyes as they brimmed and spilled over. "You knew, and you helped her?"
She couldn't answer, lips mashed so hard together it seemed she meant never to speak again.
The Elders' grip on his shoulders changed, fingers curling so only the middle and forefinger were extended and pressed to the arteries on either side of his throat, and then mirrored the hold on the pulse at his wrists, shackling him with the beginnings of the ritual. And that was when it became real. That was when the disbelief in his eyes turned to fear, when the dazed compliance turned to struggle. He pulled—not enough to break free, but enough that they lurched to hold him.
"Don't let them do this," he insisted, his voice full of all the power and conviction hers had lacked and near to breaking with it. "I know you think that this is your fault—that it's better this way—"
"It is," she choked out, bitter tears finally starting to spill. "This is all I can give you. A way to live your life. I can't let things go back to the way they were, can't you understand that? Would you really rather I just leave you here, condemn you to lifetime of torture when we both know—"
"Yes, Zelda," he hissed, straining again, as his own eyes started to brim. "Gods, yes, that's what I want. I know you don't understand. I know it scares you. But this is all I have left. Please. Don't let them take away what I am."
The atrium around them was a vacuum, silent in a way that only a room full of Sheikah possibly could be, making every shaking breath she took that much more deafening. He stared up at her in too much light as the foremost Elder came up behind him, pressing her fingertips and the pads of her thumbs to the sides of his face and his forehead. He flinched, breath spiking, and held her eyes. Imploring her to reconsider.
And then everything stopped, because they were all waiting for her. For her permission, or her judgment, or her absolution.
She sucked a breath to answer and couldn't, her hands pressing beneath her ribs to hold in the cry trying to break loose there and tears spilling down her cheeks. She wanted to respect his wishes. She wanted to give him every stupid thing he asked for. She wanted to be brave enough to let him make his own choices, even if they hurt him.
But she couldn't. She couldn't.
She met the Elder's eyes and nodded.
"Do it."
Link made a sound, something desperate and anguished as his whole body sprung taut, as he made to pull, or run, or tear his own throat out rather than let them go through with it. But he wouldn't come loose, either bound by some magic she didn't understand or weak with despair.
"You can stop this, Zelda, please," he begged, voice vaulting, struggling for all he was worth against intangible chains as the tears he had barely restrained finally tumbled in awful streaks down his face. "Gods, please, no. I don't know how to live without you. I'm scared. I'm scared of not feeling you anymore—of not knowing—"
He stopped, gripped with panic and gulping air that couldn't come fast enough, and screwed his eyes shut. Glowing veins fractured from his wrists and neck and the places where the Elder's fingertips touched his face. The tiniest bit of light in a realm of shadow magic. A testament to how unnatural it was. Beside her Robbie trapped a cry in his throat, unsheathing the dagger, answering a call no one could hear but him and shaking so hard the blade trembled in his hands.
He pressed his fist against his mouth, holding back a scream or worse. He whispered, "Oh, Gods."
And then the veins grew, spreading hungrily up Link's arms, through his throat, up to his eyes. They opened as the glow touched them, too, ringing his irises in light. And then the magic snapped out, so suddenly she saw spots when the room receded back into the orb glow.
The Elders let him go. He fell forward onto his hands, panting. His eyes were cast to the floor.
And just like that it was over. So quick...
She went to her knees in front of him, shaking all over, rattling with tiny sounds that resonated so much louder in the shadows.
"I'm sorry," she wept. "I'm so sorry—"
She reached for him, to hold him, to touch him, but his voice brought her up short.
He whispered, "Just go."
Purah was sobbing. Zelda's hands hovered in the space between them, empty. She stared for a moment longer at the spill of silver hair shielding his eyes, at the shape of him, doubled over in shadow so deep he was starting to blend. And then she had an inkling of what he must have felt the night he saved her from the Yiga. She felt naked in front of him. Exposed as a liar and a traitor, burning in a glare of darkness. And she wanted to run.
She got to her feet, scurrying back from him like he was a hungry flame. Robbie's hands were fists, and he was staring at the floor where the dagger had dropped from his grip, shaking. The glow was fading—or her vision was?—and it was Impa's hand on her wrist that brought her back to her senses.
She led her silently away, helping her flee, taking her through the great stone doorway, through darkness and darkness that never seemed to end, leaving Kakariko and its shadows behind. They went for hours without stopping to rest, finally stepping out of the deep seated chill of the caverns towards higher ground, toward the humidity and the warmth of a more familiar realm. The journey was so much easier when she was used to being blind.
It was so much easier when there was something to run from, when there was guilt nipping at her heels.
Eventually they emerged from the stone, climbed out from behind a spray of waterfalls cascading down the cliffs into the pools below. They moved through the forest until they saw torches bobbing in the distance. Weaving through the trees like a flock of fairy spirits. Impa ducked away from their glow, but her touch lingered on Zelda's wrist, waiting until the search party was near enough to ensure they would find her. And then she bled away into darkness.
The blooms of torchlight dappled and swam in her vision, swaying, chasing, descending on her and pulling her out of shadow. Pulling her into the light. Banishing the dark.
She whispered, for no one to hear, "I didn't get to say goodbye."
