Prompt No. 8
Word count: ~2020
Universe: Ocarina of Time
Pairings: Zelink
Rating: K
Themes: Character death, grief, loss, time travel

"Don't Say Goodbye"

Link held Zelda in his arms the day she died.

Her lips were too pale, her pulse too faint, as she rested her head on his shoulder. She felt so fragile and feather-light it made his stomach twist.

"I have loved every moment of this," she whispered, her eyelids heavy and her smile distant. "I wouldn't change a thing."

"Rest now," he said, laying his cheek on her hair.

But she knew better. She always knew better.

"I'm sorry we have to say goodbye," she sighed, her eyes vibrant and glistening to the last, and he tried to swallow his heart down out of his throat.

"Then don't say goodbye."

She took her last breath in his arms, and then she was gone.

They buried her alongside her mother and father in the Temple of Time. Dignitaries came from all corners of the country to pay their respects, and the kingdom declared an official period of mourning. Bards and minstrels wrote songs. They said she was the fairest, kindest, wisest ruler Hyrule had ever known. They said she would never be forgotten. And Link spent the whole ordeal fingering the blue instrument in his pocket.

Because there was so much he would change. He wouldn't have let her put him off when he said she seemed more tired than usual. He would have brought doctors to diagnose her condition earlier. He would have torn her from her work and forced her to rest when she insisted on being stubborn. He would have brought her to the healing fountains when she was still healthy enough to travel.

He would have saved her life.

So, one night, riddled with grief, he brought the Ocarina to his lips and played.

There was a rush of magic, every molecule in his body palpitating as they scrambled to compensate for the displacement. But outside of the way he couldn't seem to catch his breath, nothing seemed to have changed. He was still in their room, in the dark, the town outside the window glimmering with stars and lantern light. Maybe, with the Sage of Time gone from the world, the Ocarina had lost the powers it once had.

But then there she was, standing in the doorway in her night slip, splashed with candlelight as she set down her chamberstick.

"What's the matter with you?" she asked, braiding the end of her hair with a bemused smile on her face. "You look like you've just run a mile."

He crossed to her and kissed her, breathlessly, reverently, whispering her name wherever he could in relief. She slipped her arms around his neck, her braid tumbling loose and forgotten, and smiled against his mouth.

"What's gotten into you?"

"The date," he breathed, hands biting possessively into his waist. "What's the date?"

She told him. It was five weeks before the day she died. That wasn't much time.

He had all the castle physicians brought in, even though it was close to midnight. They all took turns measuring her pulse and feeling for fever and checking her throat and her eyes while Link paced like something feral at the foot of her bed.

They told him she was in perfect health.

"You're not fine," he had hissed, after she put a stop to his near-violent tirade and dismissed the terrorized doctors. "You're sick. And you'll be dead before autumn's end."

She crawled under the covers and coaxed him into bed beside her, and he put his arms around her and told her everything. He told her how quickly her condition had progressed. He told her how the country had mourned. He told her how he was going mad with grief, and how he had come back to save her and to save himself. He told her over and over again how much he loved her.

She went with him to a fairy fountain the next day, bathing in its healing waters and letting the fairy spirits sprinkle her with magic. She ate well. She rested often. She cut her workload in half, and then again when Link still wasn't satisfied. They spent every waking moment together, and the rest nestled in each other's arms.

But exactly on time, her symptoms appeared, and just as the trees turned bare, she was gone.

He laid a kiss on her forehead, whispering apologies and promises, and played the Ocarina again.

The next five weeks were more disciplined than the first. A cup of blue potion with every meal. Bathing at the fairy fountain as many nights as they could get away. Even visiting the Great Fairy more than once, asking for magic, or wisdom, or a miracle. But she still declined, her life draining inexplicably away and Link forced to watch it again, powerless to change it.

"I'm sorry we have to say goodbye," she said, like she always did, and he was still listening to her last breath as he brought the Ocarina to his mouth.

He spent the next five weeks studying in the library, researching symptoms and illnesses and treatments and cures. He spent the five weeks after that gathering all manner of strange ingredients, eyeball frogs and odd poultices and Great Fairy's tears, carefully trying to work out a cure—did she feel any stronger? had her appetite improved any? was it any easier to breathe?—but nothing ever changed. He started the next cycle by asking her what he should do, hoping in her wisdom. She told him to stop playing with fate. But he couldn't leave well enough alone.

So he played the song again, and again, and again, and watched her die again, and again, and again.

It wasn't long before he lost count of the songs, the weeks, the deaths, the restarts.

"You need to let me go," she had told him once. More than once. Sometimes rosy-cheeked, curled up in her night slip in his arms on that very first night. Sometimes pale and weak, on the very edge of death. He always pressed a lingering kiss to her hair and told her the same thing.

"I'm sorry. I just can't."

So the weeks bled into months, and they bled into something else. It was the same scenes, the same days, the same arguments, the same grief, endlessly repeating in a cycle he couldn't vanquish and that he wouldn't break. It was a strange way to live. Zelda said it wasn't living at all.

Link stood by the window, staring through the spangles of dust glittering in the sunbeams and fingering the Ocarina in his pocket.

"What are you thinking?" she asked, her voice small and feathery.

"You die tomorrow," he murmured, tracing the smooth, reassuring porcelain with his fingertips. "I was thinking about what I'll try next time around."

"I see."

He turned, glancing at his wife where she was cradled in a veritable cloud of white pillows. "I'm sorry. That sounded callous. I haven't given up on you yet. I'm just…"

She reached for him before he could finish, ushering him over wordlessly, and tangled her fingers in his as he sat on the edge of her bed.

"You're tired," she said. "I can see it in your eyes."

"A little. Nothing to worry yourself about."

"How long have you been doing this? Trying to change the future?"

"I don't know," he murmured. "A few years, maybe."

She arched an eyebrow at him, like she could sense how conservative an estimate that had been. "And how many times have I tried to talk you out of it?"

He smiled grimly, leaning to press a kiss to her forehead. "Too many times. If it's all the same to you, can we skip it this time around?"

"I can't remember the last time I played that ocarina," she sighed wistfully, and he nodded.

"It's been a very long time."

"Can I play it?"

"What makes you think I have it?"

She scoffed weakly. "You never let it out of your sight. And you've been fingering it in your pocket for the last half an hour."

He produced it, smirking, and laid it gently in her hands. She cleared her throat, setting the mouthpiece to her lips. The note came out shaky, and she had to cough before she could try again.

"Let me," he said, but she shook her head, setting her lips against it again.

"You don't know this song."

He didn't. It was melancholic and aching, full of beautiful refrains that lingered on long, low notes and ended in a climbing dissonance that never resolved. It sounded like grief. It sounded like the piece of his heart that was still screaming from losing her the first time. It sounded like being lost. Like being lost in a cycle that wouldn't end.

He looked away, towards the sun streaming through the window, not sure he could stand to listen to the rest. Not sure he could stand to hear how it ended.

And then he heard the porcelain crack.

His eyes jumped to the instrument in her hands, to her eyes, blue as the summer sky, vibrant and glistening to the last, as she struck the last, resonant, high note of the dissonance, as high as the Ocarina would play. Then light poured out of spidery veins that spread from the windway to the toneholes, and it shattered before he could so much as shout.

The porcelain rained down in bits and pieces into her lap, and Link dove as if to catch them, panic rising in his throat. He traced the jagged edges, trembling, knowing there was nothing for it. Knowing that what the Sage of Time had chosen to destroy could not easily be put together again.

"No," he begged, pawing at the fragments, desperately trying to piece them together anyway. "Goddesses, Zelda, what have you done?"

"Please don't waste our last day together being angry with me," she whispered, her mouth twisting as she tried to force a smile and tears tumbling down her face.

He swallowed fury and panic. She was right. She was always right.

"No, no, of course not," he breathed, gathering her hands up in his and pressing a long, lingering kiss to her knuckles. "I'm not angry with you. I'm just…"

Lost. I'm lost without you. Please don't go. Please.

"I'm sorry, Link," she whispered. "I can't stand the thought of you doing this to yourself anymore. I just can't. Please understand that. I want you to live your life."

His lips pulled down and his brow peaked, eyes shutting too tight as the weight of it struck him, as he finally gave way to tears and told her the truth.

"I can't. I don't know how to live without you. I don't want to know how."

"Yes, you can," she said, reaching up to cup his cheek in her hand. "Find the courage."

"I'm so sorry, Zelda," he quavered bitterly, covering her hand with his own and holding it close. "I'm so sorry I couldn't save you."

"Don't be, my love." She mustered a watery smile. "It just wasn't meant to be."

He gathered her up into his arms gently, and she tucked herself under his chin, resting her head on his chest the way she liked. He shuddered at the hauntingly familiar sensation of her shallow breaths, of her hand resting too softly against his neck, and leaned his cheek against her hair.

"I love you," he said, and he felt her sigh.

"And I love you. I'm sorry we have to say goodbye."

"Then don't say goodbye," he whispered, the words falling from his mouth like the last leaves of autumn.

She took a breath. And then she went still.

He held onto her for a long time, still not ready, for all his running, to face the end of the song. The resolution to the dissonance. He just didn't have the courage.

It was a fitting punishment from the gods that only now, when he was powerless to alter it himself, did time diverge from its unchangeable course.

It had taken her a day early.