A/N: Whumptober 2020 is upon us! You can read the prompts here on FFN, or on my Tumblr, embyrinitalics, if you like watching me scream in the tags. Thanks and enjoy! xoxo

Prompt No. 1
Word count: ~1870
Universe: Twilight Princess, sequel to "No. 21 — Laced Drink" (2019/Ira Deorum)
Pairings: Zelink
Rating: T
Themes: Brainwashing, memory loss, fever, restraints

Waking Up Restrained

It was hot.

Sweat dripped down the back of his neck, down his front. The air was thick like chu jelly and his eyelids felt weighted. He couldn't lift his hands to cover his brow, to blot out the light making his head pound.

They were tied to the bed.

He forced his eyes open, pulse spiking, and slurped a gelatinous breath. He thrashed, pulled hard against shackles on his wrists, around his neck, and heard water and ceramic hit the floor. He sat up and clambered back blindly against the headboard, gasping and trembling with adrenaline as the room blurred—and then he felt cold hands on his jaw, heard a familiar voice trying to soothe him, and swallowed.

"You're all right, Link. You're safe."

He sagged into her touch, panting, and tried to open his eyes again. He caught a glimmer of tired eyes, of her exhausted expression, before he had to shut them. The room wouldn't stop spinning.

"Zelda," he murmured, propriety forgotten, wishing her hands were everywhere. The air was still too thick, and so was his voice. "What's going on?"

"Try to relax," she said, brushing his matted bangs from his forehead. "You haven't been yourself."

He hadn't a clue what that was supposed to mean. Or why it felt like he was burning alive. He tried to breathe and choked on sludge.

"It's hot," he rasped, and she flickered out of reach.

For a moment he thought she had left him to burn. But then he heard her gather something wet off the floor, and soon after a cool washcloth dabbed at his forehead, at his throat, at the sides of his neck. It cleared his head a little. He could hear the frown on her voice.

"It's the fever. I don't know how long it will be before it breaks," she said, and the slight tremor in her throat told him it had already been a while.

That was unlike her. She was usually so calm and collected, even when everyone around her fidgeted. He couldn't help but wonder what had her so off balance. And why was she the one at his bedside, anyway? Wasn't it a bit beneath the queen to tend to a soldier on his sickbed?

She asked, "How much do you remember?"

He thought back, wading through a hazy murk of memories, some of them distinctly monochromatic in his head. It must have been the fever.

"I was on assignment in the desert," he panted, and sighed in relief when she pressed the cloth beneath his collarbone.

There was shuffling. Someone closed the drapes. Picked up the pieces of the bowl he had unintentionally sent crashing to the floor. He heard someone place a new one nearby and fill it. The queen took the cloth away to refresh it, and then wrung it out and set it back to his face.

"What else?"

"Nothing," he whispered. "I came home."

The door closed. He tried opening his eyes again. The room was darker with the windows covered, not quite so dizzying even if the room did still swerve a bit. They were alone again. There was a glass of water on the nightstand. He reached for it, his hand coming up dismally short, and he blinked at the chain. There was blood dried down the length of his forearm.

Zelda reached for the glass in his stead, frowning, and sidled onto the mattress, cradling his neck and guiding the rim to his lips. He downed it and still felt thirsty. She was refilling the glass from the pitcher before he could ask for it.

"What happened?" he asked, after she had helped him drink the rest.

She rubbed at her hands like they hurt her, and then reached for the washcloth and wrung it out again. He watched her, waiting for an answer, as she pressed the cool relief against his neck. He knew that silence, that calculated restraint that she used so often navigating diplomatic hurdles. When she had a secret, or there were feelings to spare, or worse. He hated it.

"How long do you think you've been home?"

"Two weeks, maybe," he slurred, watching her blur and tilt.

She frowned, but it seemed more like a reflex than a display of her displeasure with his answer. She dipped the cloth again, wrung it out. Her hands shook.

Finally, she said, "You've been home four months."

Light pulsed behind his eyes, all red and thick, overlaying a sudden blur of images in his mind like a film. Rotations and faces and duty rosters, meals and reports and routine, and sometimes, floating a little brighter than the others, smiles from his queen. But it was like watching his life play out of someone else's eyes.

He whispered, flinching, "That's impossible."

But the light got brighter, redder, thicker, painting the influx of memories like blood. And then there was blood—on the wall, on the doorknob, on a guard's throat or his middle or the back of his head, on Link's teeth as they shunted back into his gums. People who had seen too much, who had become too suspicious. Who had begun to guess.

And no one would accuse the Hero of Twilight of assaulting men who were so obviously mauled by a beast.

He couldn't breathe. He wanted to scream, wanted to claw the images out of his mind, wanted to drop his head into his hands and weep, but they wouldn't reach. The chains kept his hands uselessly near his ribs. And the light only got redder.

"Oh gods," he choked. "What have I done?"

He could still taste their blood on his teeth. Men he had trained and served with and fought beside. It made him gag, all metallic and syrupy where it had hit the back of his throat. Tears fell from his eyes, part shame and part mourning and part shock. But he couldn't even wipe them away. The chains around his wrists were too short.

"Link," she said, her cool hand twisting his face sideways so he had to look at her anchoring him in the present. Her eyes weren't the serene, intelligent blue they usually were. They were too turbulent and harried, like she hadn't slept in days. "I need you to listen. I won't have you for long. I need you to remember. You said the Gerudo gave you a potion."

Cold pain shunted through his skull like an ice pick driven through his left eye. He pulled at the restrains, a cry catching in his throat, his hands making claws as he reached to press against his aching head. He saw them. He saw white lips, a sandstone room, heard a soft voice whispering, whispering, whispering…

"I know it hurts, but I need you to remember. Anything at all. What color was the potion? What did it smell like? Can you remember the taste?"

The pain grew in his head like a tumor, and then slithered down his throat, grabbing frigidly at muscles and bone. His chest cramped and his lungs felt crushed. It was like watching a memory through a cloud, noxious and rancid. He wanted to look away. He saw a furl of red hair, the soft silk of a veil, heard a soft voice whispering, whispering, whispering…

"Purple," he gasped, throat constricting as he tried to draw up the rest. "It smelled… it was like drinking a poe's soul. It had the same smell. It tasted like death."

Her brow furrowed, and then she rushed away, digging through stacks at the far side of the room, and came back in a hurry with a tome in her arms. She climbed onto the mattress and spread the book open between them, scouring with her hands and tumbling through pages.

"That's good. What else?"

"It turned everything—I don't know. Everything turned hazy and thick. It was like being underwater for too long. Like I couldn't breathe—" he rocked against the ache, pulled against the chains, forced the rest out like a tortured confession. "Like my tongue was swollen in my mouth."

The pain lurched down his spine and settle between the vertebrae, growing until he thought they might snap, and he screamed through his teeth. She abandoned her research and moved to take his face in her hands, knowing she was close to losing him. He quaked, gasped, panted, burning alive and frosting over at once, and in his delirium he looked at her. Because there was nothing as good or as beautiful in the world as she was, and he was miserable enough to reach for comfort wherever he could find it, no matter how improper.

And for once, she looked lost. What he wouldn't have given to be able to guide her.

"What did they tell you?" she asked.

Kill kill kill kill…

He dropped his head into her hands, gasping, sobbing, trying not to listen. But it was getting louder all the time. Little instructions, seeds of ideas: weaken the country from the inside out, damage the walls in imperceptible places, hurt them in ways they won't see coming.

Kill kill kill kill…

"You have to remember…"

"I can't…"

Kill kill kill kill…

Her hands threaded in his hair, across his scalp, and when he dropped his face it met her neck. Her fingers stroked his nape, soothing him and making his stomach twist at once. He panted against her throat, wondering at the soft, ambrosial taste on his lips. Her skin was cool like porcelain. He wanted to tip his face up against the restraints, sip the flavor of her chin, of her mouth.

Kill the queen.

He went still in her arms, the directive so unbreakable and sure that it numbed the pain. It was like waking from a dream.

His transformation was quick, but she was quicker.

He thrashed against his chains in a fury, fur and claws and teeth claiming him as he lurched to tear out her throat. She was already standing at the foot of his bed, watching with shallow, glassy eyes. This was hardly the first time he'd taken a snap at her. It wouldn't be the last before this was over.

He growled and frothed, his wolfshape turned senseless by the Gerudo's tampering. His body had twisted itself around while he shifted, his hind feet clawing at the headboard as he strained against the irons around his neck and forelimbs, digging so hard into them as he pulled that they drew blood.

She couldn't help but wonder how much of him had been real over the last four months. How many of his smiles and soft compliments had been part of the act, part of the subterfuge. How much of it had been a means to get close enough to kill her, and how much of it had been the real Link shining through.

She didn't want to set herself up for disappointment by hoping. The odds of anything he had done not being completely colored by the brainwashing was slim at best. And yet, she hoped.

And she hoped she could find a way to reverse what they had done without killing him first.