A/N: Finally finished this chapter! Sorry for the wait. Firstly, thank you so much to everyone who left me a review. You make me glad I'm sharing this instead of keeping it holed away on my hard drive. Also, this story has also breached the 100 follower mark, which is super exciting! I'm so glad you guys like this premise and I hope you enjoy the way it all unfolds.

I'm looking forward to getting your feedback on this next one—it's something of a necessary crossroads in the story—so please leave a review if you're so inclined!

Revelation

Breath shunted like fire into my lungs as I breached the surface of the memory, gasping for air. My hand flew to my chest as I sat up, trying to keep my heart from bursting out of it. I was drowning in grief that wasn't mine, tasting the bitter, metallic taste of someone else's guilt on my tongue. A scream welled and broke in my throat, and I dug my fingernails into my scalp, shaking with panicked sobs that shuddered out of me without tears.

I couldn't breathe. The raw, undiluted gruesomeness of what she had done coiled behind my ribs, sitting in me like a stone. She had saved thousands of lives from an untimely, perhaps even horrific death, yes; but death came for everyone, eventually, and though it was nothing to rejoice in it was at least natural. There was nothing natural about what she had done.

Songs must have been written about that night, I realized bitterly. The minstrels probably painted her choiceless and cornered, spinning dark, romantic lyrics around their tragic parting as they made the ultimate sacrifice for the world they loved. But I knew the truth, the ugliness of it. She had had a choice. And she chose to send him into a fate so much worse than death.

She condemned the man she loved to 10,000 years of torture that no mortal was meant to endure.

His name blazed across my mind like a streak of light, and in that moment I knew him. I knew the quiet half-smile he wore when she caught him staring; I knew the way his gentleness tempered his strength; I knew the warmth of his arms around her when he had pulled her into his saddle one frigid winter day, when her hands were too cold to grip the reins, and the satisfied glint in his eye, as he guided the horse through the deep snowdrift, when she didn't fight him. I knew they weren't my memories at all. But they felt like mine. And I knew him.

I scanned the woods, stumbling to my feet when he was nowhere to be found. I rallied my power, breathless, closing my eyes to feel for him. He wasn't far; his glow was strong, pulsing rhythmically with the heartbeat of the forest. I headed into the grove and found him not long afterward, lingering listlessly among the oaks.

For a moment I was speechless, overwhelmed by so many cavernous emotions, most of which I hadn't had time enough to process and which didn't truly belong to me. Watching him now, hauntingly familiar, chest going tight and aching as I came to grips with how close I had come to willingly murdering an innocent person, I was plagued by another, unanswerable question: How had I been so blind?

"Link," I choked out.

He didn't turn, or even acknowledge me, and another useless sob welled in my chest. I felt thrown into the eager, spindly clutches of madness, burning with fury and regret that weren't even mine.

I shouted, "Link!"

Finally he turned, his piercing, two-toned eyes settling begrudgingly on me. "What about him?"

I paused, absorbing his tenor. It was guarded, but mostly it was resigned.

"You knew," I breathed, the pieces snapping idly into place. "You knew I would remember."

"No, I didn't know. But I suspected." His eyes darkened, peering back into memory. "You've said that name before, in your sleep."

I shook my head, bitter and angry and miserable. "How could you do this? How could you lead me into this without telling me the truth?"

"The truth?" he scoffed. "You're a child, bearing a power you can barely restrain and that you don't understand, trying to control a fate you know nothing about—what do you know of truth?"

"I know who you are!"

He stalked dangerously forward, daring me to challenge him again. "And who am I?"

"The Hero," I hurled defiantly, standing my ground and raising my chin. "The one chosen by the Sword that Seals the Darkness. The one destined to fight the Calamity and—"

"He doesn't exist anymore," he interrupted brusquely. "He ceased to exist the moment the Calamity entered him."

"That's not true," I insisted, half-countering, half-begging. "You are the Hero. That's why you spared me. That's why you spared the Outpost. That's why you're trying to destroy yourself, why you're trying to stop the Calamity from ever rising again! You still control it!"

"Control it?" he echoed incredulously. "Is that where this sudden, misplaced esteem is coming from? You think that I contain him? That the Calamity is trapped in me?" He came even closer, his eyes burning with a fury so ancient I couldn't begin to understand it. "Well, let me disabuse you of that notion. I am the Calamity, just as much as I am your precious hero. Whatever wrath I restrain is my own, and you're a fool for thinking otherwise."

The anger ebbing off him should have been a warning, but I was possessed well beyond caution. The remorse rattled inside me like a beast, clawing its way out and leaving me splayed open and bloody.

"That isn't your fault. None of it was. You shouldn't have to pay for the mistakes she made!"

"You have the gall to say she made mistakes? You, who reap the benefits of her choices? You're only alive and you're kingdom is only standing because of what she did."

"I'm not so blind that I think that makes it right. Everything about this is wrong, and I won't have any part in it! I won't help you kill yourself!"

His lip curled, baring a sliver of white tooth as he reined his anger. He turned his back on me in a deliberate retreat and paced away a few steps before he whirled, his frustration finally breaking through his collected exterior.

"This is exactly why I kept the nature of what I am from you! I knew you would let your idealistic, inflated sense of justice get in the way of your judgment. Zelda knew what had to be done, and she didn't hesitate to do it just because it was morally questionable!"

"You think this is what she wanted?"

"She did her duty!"

"She loved you!"

"I know that!"

Silence descended between us like a thunderhead, charged with anger and despair the world should never have forgotten. His eyes bored into mine and my nerve wilted. Of course he had known. In that moment, suspended in his penetrating gaze, I did feel like a child. I could see my own presumptuousness, the staggering inexperience that made me unfit to be his counterpart and that made me incapable of truly comprehending everything he had lost. I had never even been in love, certainly not in the way she had loved him. It had filled her, ripping her asunder even as the Calamity had tried to tear him in two.

"She did her duty, Zelda," he repeated, more controlled. "And you have to do yours."

I shook my head, bitter tears spilling out of my eyes, and folded my arms. "No."

"How are you so incredibly arrogant? You barely know your own lore, your own history, the nature of any of this, and you think you can just make things end the way you want through sheer force of will?"

"I know I'm young! But this is wrong! And I'm the only one who can begin to make amends for what happened!"

"You can make amends by doing as I say!" he bit back, raising his voice to meet mine. "The Calamity has to be destroyed, or all of this will have been for nothing!"

"There has to be another way!"

"There is no other way!" he roared, so loudly it was hardly human, and I had to reach for the goddess for the strength not to cower. "I have to be destroyed!"

"You shouldn't have to make that sacrifice!"

"She made that sacrifice as much as I did, and I won't dishonor her memory by undermining what she's done! This is what she wanted!"

I stared at him, horrified. And then whatever good sense I had left in me snapped.

"She never wanted this!" I shouted—at him, at fate, at the gods themselves. But it seemed no matter how loud I made myself or how desperately I tried to make them see, that none of them would ever understand the agony his Zelda had felt. It was burning a hole right through my middle. "She regretted it! She regretted it the moment it happened, and she died regretting it!"

He stopped, the rigid lines of his face jumping as though I'd just slapped him. The world felt unnaturally still in his ensuing silence. Holding its breath. I watched as something dark rose in him, something feral and shapeless and old, until whatever was holding it back finally broke.

Power ruptured out of him like the quivering, low note of a harp, whipping the forest with a squall that bent the trees until they threatened to snap. The old oaks groaned, too massive to bend, and the mossy ground heaved as their roots lifted beneath it. My startled cry was pulled out of my mouth by the wind, and I threw my arms over my face, shielding my eyes from debris, and reached in a panic for the goddess. She skirted away as though caught in that wind.

As his power hit its apex, bursting out of him, he flung the runoff furiously into the grove with a crack like thunder, blasting a desolate, hollow canyon as far as the brink that fell into Lake Mekar. A scar split across the ground under his feet and branched, moving away from him like dark, jagged arteries as the power filled him; as a raw, haggard gasp pulled from his throat as it overtook him with its light. The earth shook and the trees swayed, and the air tasted of suspended electricity. The brilliant amber in his eyes warred in earnest with the vibrant blue, nearly drowning it out.

This was what he had always warned me about, I realized grimly, what he had always feared. If he lost control, no amount of desire to spare me on his part would protect me from what he was capable of. But after so many painful seconds, he drew the power back, quaking with the effort of reining his own fury.

I waited with bated breath for the storm to pass, fresh tears running hot trails over the cool places where the wind had wicked the old away. The earth calmed and the wind slowly died, the canopy quivering noisily in the aftermath. He closed the distance between us as stillness settled back into the forest, panting, and his hands bit painfully into my arms. His voice was quiet, desperate and laced with warning.

"Tell me you're lying."

His clashing eyes bored into mine, piercing and unreadable, and I suddenly felt as though I were holding the last, tattered shreds of the man he used to be in my hands.

"I've seen your Zelda in visions, in dreams," I whispered. "In the Lost Woods, she begged me not to let you die. Last night, I saw her confine the Calamity inside you, and I felt—" my throat constricted, thick with the memory of her heartbreak, and I watched helplessly as his eyes recede into some dark, private past, too old and tangible to question. "I'm so sorry."

He didn't release me; it seemed, his trembling hands closed firmly on my arms, that I was the anchor keeping him from losing all sense of reality, or from splintering the world with a thought. His eyes were misted over with a haze of ageless memory, lingering and haunting like the ruined remnants of some civilization, lost to the sands of time and wiped from the annals of history, slowing eroding out of existence.

Finally, he murmured, "It doesn't matter. None of this matters. There isn't another way."

"She said there was a way to save you," I whispered, wetting dry lips. They tasted of salt. "She said the answer was at Thyphlo."

His eyes slid away as he digested the idea, flickering with the briefest semblance of recognition. He murmured, "That doesn't make sense."

I had no answer for that, waiting silently for him to work through the puzzle the woman from my dreams had left us, which I was woefully ill-equipped to solve myself. His grip on my arms slowly eased, and shivered as he took my face in his hands, wiping my tears away with his thumbs. His eyes searched mine, but I realized with a sinking feeling that he was looking for someone else in them.

"You won't just let me die in peace," he muttered bitterly. "I should've known."

He dropped his hands, turning silently towards the place the pedestal rested in the shadow of the Deku Tree, and I released a breath that I had held for too long.

My legs trembled beneath me as I followed, the adrenaline that had kept me stalwart in the face of his anger beginning to wane. I fell behind as he slipped into the grove, but the pedestal wasn't far; I saw him ascending the worn stone through the trees, the image of him approaching the sword flickering in and out of sight as I drifted between the pillars of them like something secret, something hidden by the oldest magic.

I moved quietly into the clearing behind him lined with stepping stones. The Deku Tree's face was still obscured by dense, unmoving bark, seeing all but offering nothing. If he had any sour opinions on the Calamity's blasting a ravine out of his forest, he was keeping them to himself. Sunlight was filtering through the canopy of knitted blossoms, bathing the Calamity in soft blooms of color. It was like watching another dream.

"I ask you again," he murmured, still facing the sword. "Help me do this."

"I won't," I said, my voice sounding so small in the expanse.

He turned, unexpectedly, watching me from his perch on the triangular dais. His eyes still smoldered with quiet rage, but it was less pointed.

"Why?"

"Why?" I echoed incredulously, my brow pinching. "Hyrule owes you a debt that can never be repaid, and when I say I can't abide killing you after everything you've sacrificed, you ask me why?"

"You're doing this for me?"

His voice was so level, so bland and detached, it was hardly a question. I plowed forward three steps, as though closing the distance might somehow help him see the situation clearer.

"Yes!"

"Has it occurred to you that this is what I want?"

I stared numbly, flinching away from his words like an unanticipated slap, and something tired and awful stirred behind my ribs and drank deep of the darkness in his eyes. It felt like hopelessness. It felt like surrender. He moved away from the blade slowly, toward me, as though sensing my weakness; as though drawn to it.

"I've been harboring the Calamity for 10,000 years, learning its hatred, tasting its power, letting it corrupt me and knowing I will never be free of it. It filled me with its malice, rooted itself in me with barbed spores that burned as they tore into me and that still burn. It consumed me until there was nothing left." He had closed the gap, glowering down at me with a hatred that stole the breath from my chest. I was crying again; his eyes were burning like two suns trapped in a pair of moonstones. "Haven't I done enough?"

"Please," I whispered, "don't give up. Not now. Take me to Thyphlo. Look for the answer with me. If there's a way to save you, it has to be there. And if it isn't—" I licked dry lips, searching briefly for a third option. There wasn't one. "If it isn't, I promise I'll help you with whatever ritual needs to be done."

He considered my offer briefly, searching me impassively. "Do you swear?"

I nodded adamantly, frantically latching onto the prospect of compromise like a piece of flotsam in a rush of floodwater. He frowned, and then took me by the wrist and led me up the stones to the dais and the sword. My breath caught haltingly as I stumbled behind him and he pulled me to the other side of the pedestal.

"Link—"

"We're not going anywhere without a contingency plan," he insisted in a tone that brokered no argument. "If something goes wrong, or if Thyphlo is a dead end, we use the sword. Do you understand?"

I pursed my lips, but nodded. That wasn't unreasonable. He sighed hotly and eyed the sword. It stared back at us out of two different sets of eyes. I reached for it tentatively and traced the pommel of the hilt with my fingertips. Power emanated from it, rippling gently across my skin before I ever touched it. The sensation was strange, as though I were tasting a thought or hearing a color. I tasted the boundless, sharp edge of ageless memory on my tongue, of untold stories, of futures that never were and a past shrouded in incongruous riddles. I heard the discordant hue of its endless history, of dark blood eaten over too many lifetimes, of divine fires forging its desperate beginning before the world was.

He didn't move at first, watching the sword with frustrated reluctance. He reached for it finally, testing the limits of the magic that repelled him, and growled under his breath, "This is madness."

His hand stopped short of the hilt, shuddering as it was entangled in a web of enchantment. The Sword reacted to him, glowing, and I wrapped my arms around myself without thinking, shivering as the power ebbing off it wafted over me.

"I can't get closer," he murmured, frowning. "I need your power."

I took a breath to steel my nerves. It didn't help. "What do I do?"

"Place your hands over mine," he said, reaching out with his other hand so that both were extended towards the sword as if to grasp it. "Then direct your sealing magic there. Only there."

I stared, startled. "Will that work?"

"The Calamity and this body are tied together. You can't seal one without the other. But it might recede."

"Recede? Is that even possible?"

"He didn't say anything to the contrary," he growled, his eyes flickering indignantly to the Deku Tree. "But it is just a theory."

I hesitated, my hands floating near his as I waged an internal war with uncertainty. Our hands hovered in two curved rows, encircling the hilt. It glowed between them like a star ringed in a halo of moonlight.

"Won't that hurt you?"

His reply was taut with impatience. "I don't expect that it will feel very pleasant."

"But what if I—"

"Zelda. Stop asking questions."

I reflexively fisted my hands and then opened them again, frowning. Then, carefully, I called up the sealing power. I drew it up in bucketfuls, like water out of well, letting it fill me until light shone out of my skin; then I braced myself and channeled it, keeping the power confined to the sphere my hands surrounded.

He took a quiet, full breath as the power touched him. It wasn't enough; the power lingered on his skin, not quite penetrating deep enough to make the dark in him recoil. I grimaced as I poured more power into the sealing, squirming as I felt it work, separating the two pieces of him, tangibly peeling one away and leaving the other. Flaying him alive. But it was working.

The Calamity drew back from the mortal form it inhabited, repelled, and all at once the sword let him approach.

His hands grasped the hilt and the blade shuddered, recognizing him as its master and its enemy at once. It hummed darkly as he began to pull, as though in warning; light emanated from the slot in the pedestal and I felt the essence of the sword binding itself to him.

Metal scraped against stone and my pulse fluttered. It was moving.

The Sword pulsed between his hands, throbbing in time with his heartbeat. His eyes were shut, the muscles of his jaw clenching as it tested him. The blade sang against the stone again as it slid further out of the pedestal, and power ebbed from it like a burst of wind. The vibrations intensified, rattling the pebbles on the dais and jarring my bones. The sound of it seemed to fold on itself, expanding and imploding at once. It resonated until my lips and my fingers tingled and I thought the trunks of the trees might splinter, and then it stopped.

The blade rang out as he unsheathed it from the rock, a clear sound that pierced the air and commanded reverence. Then it clattered against the stone as he dropped it, and he retreated a few steps, falling haphazardly to one knee. I snapped the channel of my power closed, taking a reflexive step forward to steady him, but he held his hand up to deflect my approach. His palm was scorched red, blistered as though he had been holding the hot end of a branding iron.

"Just give me a moment," he said, panting.

I waited obediently, my expression drawn. The sword laid magnificently at my feet; its length and edges were even more impressive than I could have imagined, crafted so masterfully I knew it could have no equal in all the world. We looked like a scene out of a past that never was: he kneeling before me, his sword spread at my feet like an offering, and I waiting in silence, bathed in sunlight. A knight swearing fealty to his queen.

I stepped unceremoniously over the sword, sitting down on the edge of the dais near him. He watched me with his piercing eyes, ever a war between sunset and twilight, still trying to catch his breath.

Exhaustion washed over me like a wave. It was done, and it was just beginning.

I turned my face up into the sunlight and closed my eyes. I drew breath, softly, and said, "I think I'm going to need more than a moment."

He rolled off his knee, pressing his back against one of the stones planted on one of the platform's three angles. I stole a glance at him; he was resting in earnest, his head dipped back against the rock.

We stayed like that a long time. The world seemed to suspend. My mind was turbulent and swarming as I tried to absorb the whirlwind of our argument and the bewildering new undertaking that followed; whatever was going on in his was a mystery to me, as always. The gods only knew what had convinced him to consider my proposal. But I was grateful. I couldn't bear the thought of abetting his suicide now, even if it meant destroying the Calamity along with him.

It would just be too painful.

Finally, he murmured, "The sword needs a scabbard."

"The King had one made for you, before," I whispered, watching the ghost of someone else's memory in my mind, and I squeezed my eyes shut and let my forehead drop against my hand as I willed it away. I raked my fingers through my hair as it faded, breathless. "That's going to take some getting used to."

He sighed. It was a tired sound. "This is not a good idea."

I winced at the misgiving in his voice, opting not to acknowledge the remark. But he was insistent, moving closer until any attempt to ignore him would be blatant.

"Zelda."

I could feel his eyes boring a hole in my temple, but I closed my eyes rather than look at him. "Please don't make me go through that," I whispered bitterly. "Not again."

"In the end, I may not have a choice."

"I know."

I looked at him, finally, and his eyes searched mine carefully.

"Zelda, you may not have a choice."

I shook my head. "It won't come to that."

"It might," he insisted. "I need to know that you'll be able to end this if you have to."

"It won't come to that," I repeated stubbornly, a wound cut in me 10,000 years ago suddenly too fresh to contemplate reopening. "You're the Hero. The Sword chose you. The gods chose you. You're too strong to lose yourself to this—"

"Stop romanticizing me!" he yelled, so suddenly I started. He closed his eyes and took a frustrated breath, fisting one hand and loosing it as he checked his anger. "Just stop it. I am what I am. I've accepted it. It's time you accepted it, too."

I turned away, unable to conjure an answer that would satisfy either of us, and he sighed again. When he stood and left me, I didn't move to follow. I waited, alone except for the sword that lay, drawn and discarded, over the pedestal behind me. Once, I glanced imploringly at the Deku Tree, but the face never reemerged.

In that loneliness, I became acutely aware of the way time slipped through my fingers: immeasurable moments, trickling away irretrievably out of a precious limited supply, and always feeling too long or too fleeting. I tried to fathom how many moments made up an era, how it might feel to live for a hundred years, or a thousand years, or ten thousand—or how it might feel to be burning alive for that long. From some shadowy, untapped recess in my mind, words echoed like another memory, and I flinched away from the simple truth of them: the flow of time is always cruel.

He returned some time later with a wooden scabbard, too smooth and precise to have been fashioned using anything but magic, and a matching baldric of fused vines. He handed it to me wordlessly, and I slid the blade into the sheath with some effort. The sword was heavier than it looked, and when I went to hand it back to him I had to hold the baldric with two hands. He slung it easily over his back, and my breath stole away again at the familiarity of him. Wearing the sword entrusted to him by the gods, he was the image of the Hero I had known once, or perhaps many times.

If he harbored any sentiment toward the reunion at all, he hid it well. He gave me one last scowl before he turned down the south facing path that led back into the Lost Woods, and I followed.

At the edge of the enchantment, a mouth in the fog marked the route back, and I cast a grateful glance back at the colossal tree that still slept, ever watchful, above the grove. I wondered if he had known how the threads of our fates were intertwined, if he had known the strange, inexplicable way the truth would manifest itself. I wondered, hesitantly, what he knew of what was yet to come. I wondered, as we stepped over the line onto the path he had opened for us, why he kept silent.

The return journey through the woods was uneventful. The mist lapped at our feet, but never crossed our path, and in the absence of the harrowing visions that had plagued me the first time I was able to appreciate the forest's fleeting, ethereal beauty. The mist and the moonglow, and the grey spangles that knotted whimsically in them, shifted in breathy whorls over the ancient trees; I sparked a small fire above my palm and watched the wind blow embers from the flame, and they danced lazily down the path like a smattering of fireflies.

The figure who was both the Calamity and the Hero led the way silently, the sword slung over his back flickering in the soft light where the hilt peeked out of the makeshift scabbard. There was so much I wanted to say, but words seemed clumsy, and every time I took a breath to try anyway my tongue went numb in my mouth. A hollow maw in one of the bulbous trees cackled at me as it emerged from the mist, and I sighed.

"Link," I managed, finally. He stopped, turning slowly and waiting for me to catch up. I was wringing my hands absently, reaching for words that flitted out of my grasp like sparrows. "Thank you," I said at length, searching his impervious gaze, "for doing this for me."

His eyes narrowed, finally betraying an emotion, though it was hard to say exactly what it was. Disgust, maybe. "I'm not doing this for you."

"I didn't mean—" I breathed awkwardly, and all at once the sparrows were airborne again.

The ensuing silence was uneasy. He was eyeing me expectantly, and I was trying not to shrink away from it. But I didn't know if it was the Calamity or the Hero I had condemned whose gaze I was having so much trouble meeting.

"I know that. I meant that I know that what I'm asking of you is not a little thing. I know it will be difficult."

"Impossible, even," he murmured darkly. There was accusation in his eyes, but he turned them away before they could do too much damage. "But I don't hold you responsible for that," he said tersely, like he was reminding himself. "Like I said, I'm not doing this for you."

I nodded, absorbing his brooding silence, and then started walking again, abandoning my pathetic attempts to express myself, and he fell in step with me. I moved alongside him as we went instead of trailing behind; if I was going to ask him to keep fighting the monster within instead of helping him end it like he wanted, the least I could do was fight the instinct to keep my distance in return. At least then he wouldn't be alone.

He'd been fighting alone for so long.

We came to a wall in the mist, rising out of the earth like a curtain, and he frowned at it.

"I know what you're trying to do. It's noble of you. But it's stupid."

I suppressed the retorts that bubbled to my lips with relative ease. My desire to ensure his cooperation was stronger than my pride, for now.

"Are you recanting?"

"No."

I nodded, steeling myself with a breath. "Good."

I approached the fluctuating, silvery wall, feeling my way forward blindly with an outstretched hand as I stepped into it. It was enchanted, numbing my senses and blocking my perception, but there was no deception or illusion. It was simply a barrier. Then my fingertips felt the cool breeze of Hyrule, alighting against my skin like water, and I moved eagerly towards the familiarity of it.

As my hand emerged from the mist on the other side, warm fingers closed around my wrist, pulling me out of one forest and into another. Colors and textures blurred across my vision: feathers as azure as the Tabantha sky; a flare of hair, orange as the Gerudo sun; burled muscle, flinty as Eldin crags; shimmering scales, scintillating as brightly as a moonrise over an endless swathe of water.

And then the Calamity stepped across the boundary of the mist behind me, and the deadly edge of a scimitar sliced across the artery at his throat before I could scream, spraying a red film into the late morning light like spattered dew caught on a spider's web.