A/N: *gasping for air* I MADE IT! Here it is. It's got issues, it ends like half way before where I wanted it to, BUT THAT'S OK! It is written and it is published, which is nothing short of a miracle, and I am pleased as punch to have something to share with you.

AND SPEAKING OF THINGS TO SHARE! The amazing and talented truffeart did some absolutely stunning art of Calamity!Link on Tumblr and I've been crying over it ever since, so. You have to see it. Seriously y'all. Go check it out. I can't stop screaming. Or staring into his perfect eyes. I want to blow it up and print it out on a quilt so I can wrap myself in it like a giant burrito every night, that's how much I love it. (If you go look at it now you can picture his perfect face for the rest of the chapterrr~~!)

As always, thank to all you lovely readers, mwah! And especially to those who have taken the time to leave me a review, you are fabulous and you keep me writing this monster! I hope you like it!

Bloop!

Dreamscape

The sky on the other side was pale with summer twilight. The breeze tasted of sweet grass and swift violets, and somewhere out of sight a whip-poor-will was heralding dusk. We were kneeling in the shadow of a mountain I didn't recognize, some forgotten place in some forgotten Hyrule. His eyes had fallen shut, his shoulders sagging in palpable relief, and in spite of my stubborn intentions I drifted closer.

"Link," I breathed, half concerned and half curious, but the rest of the inquiry fizzled in my throat. He was artificially still, fixated on something invisible, something internal, and I couldn't help but reach to smooth the crease in his brow.

He caught my wrist, startled, as my fingers brushed beneath his bangs; but he didn't push it away, or open his eyes, or dare to move otherwise. He held us both still for a long time; then he turned his face into my palm, breathing deep, and slowly eased his eyes open. I tried again.

"Are you all right?"

"I think so," he murmured, and I didn't need him to look at me to see the clear, cutting blue of his irises, so intense under the blushing twilight that I couldn't make out the amber haloes I knew lurked beneath. "Give me a moment."

I waited, watching his eyes trace my hand, the gnarled shape of his fingers closed around my wrist. I couldn't say what he was looking for. It was like he was waiting for his eyes to focus, or adjust to a sudden burst of light. He finally glanced at our surroundings, noticing the mountain for the first time, the rose and honey spatter of clouds behind its peak, and his jaw spasmed in thought.

"Satori," he murmured.

I frowned at the rocky spill of mountainside, trying to make it out the silhouette I knew so well, but it just wouldn't shapeshift into something recognizable. "It looks different."

"Time changes everything. Even mountains."

He stood, his fingers slipping off my wrist and tangling in my knuckles to pull me after him as he turned up the slope. I followed lazily, not exactly enthused at the prospect of spending a whole's night worth of dreams in his company, but too worn out to bother fighting with him the entire time either. We climbed up the bouldered slant in tired silence, each plateau or outcropping we reached only leading to another daunting incline, and I was reminded of our early travels: grueling hikes with a cruel taskmaster, where escape wasn't an option and there was nowhere to go but forward.

In a lot of ways, things hadn't really changed.

"How much farther?" I complained as we crested our third ridge, but he only tightened his hold and pulled me along faster.

We finally reached a patch of level ground, following its snaking shape around hulking conoids of mountainside. Our path spilled into a hidden grotto that overlooked the great Hyrule fields, soft and transient in the twilight colors and shrouded in mist. Sprouting from a rise of boulder that it grasped with long, knobby roots, a weeping cherry tree bent protectively over a glittering, slate gray pool, dripping a stream of translucent petals. It was picturesque to say the least.

I leveled a glare at the back of his head.

He didn't notice. He let me go and made for the tree, and before I could protest he had wedged the tip of his boot between the roots, grabbed a low-hanging branch, and swung himself up onto the trunk.

"Link," I hissed as he made his way up the curve of its smooth neck, and his eyes met mine through the shimmering lattice of branches, blue as Lake Hylia on a summer's day and glinting with mischief. They sucked breath from my lungs and pulled me a full three steps deeper into the grotto before I caught myself and cursed him thrice over, very loudly, in my head. "You can't climb that!"

"Why not?"

"It's sacred."

"It's just a dream," he countered, even as he proved with every easy, practiced step up to the glistening crown that he had definitely, definitely climbed this tree before. I threw my hands up and turned my back on him, exasperated. I heard the boughs creak as he reclined in its canopy, and then his voice, low and tempting, "The view is better from up here."

I glared over my shoulder. "That's blasphemous, and you're ridiculous."

He only smirked, his gaze sliding back over the mist-laden fields, and let one of his legs dangle from the tree. "Suit yourself."

I scowled, pacing to the water's edge and trying in vain to ignore the boot swaying like a pendulum in my peripheral vision. Of course he was right. Of course it was only a dream. And yes, the extra height would boost me above the row of outcroppings beneath us, sticking up into the otherwise flawless panorama like so many uneven teeth. And yes, the only reason I wasn't joining him on his perch was my own stubbornness.

I stomped my foot.

And then I crossed the length of the pond to the boulder.

"This is blasphemy," I muttered again, bracing my foot against the gnarl of roots as he had and lifting myself on the same low-hanging branch. I couldn't tell if he was smiling smugly over my concession or not; I had completely lost sight of him in the blossoms, save for his swaying boot, the sandy crown of his head, and a lazy arm thrown up over it.

"If anyone has the power to absolve me of my sins, it's you."

I climbed higher, following his voice, using the thick vines as holds as the trunk bent and swooped until I was all but horizontal, and spied him as I cleared the flower clusters. The boughs cascaded out from the stem to droop down towards the water, creating something of a nest. He was reclined comfortably in their cradle, but when he caught sight of me coming he only pointed towards the horizon.

I sidled closer to look. Rivers and plains sprawled in all directions, drawing from the towering fountainhead peaking out of the mist that was Hyrule Castle, and the mountain that would one day become the Dueling Peaks rose up in the west, still whole and unbreakable. The sky still seeped twilight colors, even though night should have caught up with us during the ascent. It was a moment frozen in time.

"This is your Hyrule," I decided, spying so many shapes in familiar places giving off the wrong silhouette. He shrugged a shoulder.

"It was yours, once, too."

Somewhere in the north, azure lights pierced through the mist—lines and rings flickering off stone and shadow, pouring out of some hidden place in Hebra, or from the sky. It was moving, too quickly and too brightly, like a formation of shooting stars. It banked as it reared up behind the castle spires, and I blinked the shape clear. A giant bird.

"Medoh," he said, answering the question I hadn't asked, and I pulled my feet out from under me to sit, a little overcome. The nest crowded us together with its angles, pushing my shoulder into his. "Do you remember?"

"I don't know."

A ghost of forgotten technology echoed in my brain, of the innards of beasts and pedestals and shrines, of circuits and currents and filters that distilled and downloaded data; of strands too complex and fragile to exist outside of the delicate liquid that lubricated their insides like precious lifeblood, and potent enough to mimic magic itself; of a curious knight who had dipped his pinky finger in when the Sheikah weren't looking to taste it, and his priceless grimace when the bitterness coated his tongue and lingered for hours. I stifled a smile, ignoring that disconcerting twist of my stomach that insisted the memory wasn't mine.

"I suppose I must. This is my dream, isn't it?"

He hummed in agreement, slipping deeper into the cradle of the branches, and we lapsed into silence. His shoulder against mine was warm. It was the strangest thing. I wanted to mention it, wanted to fixate on it. I wanted to enjoy it. And then I remembered I was still furious with him and crossed my arms.

If he thought an enchanted grotto and a breathtaking view were enough to pardon him, he had another thing coming.

"I'm sorry I lied to you about the shrine," he murmured suddenly, and despite all my intentions to be aloof and unapproachable, I turned. He was watching me with eyes that were too blue.

"I thought you said you didn't lie."

"Maybe not. But I didn't tell you the truth."

"That's quite the distinction," I droned, letting my gaze drift to the glowing glen beneath us. The water sparkled with tiny knots of light, flickering in and out of sight like questions and answers. I met his eyes again, scraping together the courage to level one of my own. "Why didn't you?"

A small, tired smile pulled at his lips as he thought about it. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"I might. You have that tell now."

His smile grew, but he stowed it, thinking. He watched Medoh circle again, watched the Regencia carve a silent path southward that was more serpentine than I remembered.

"It was selfish really," he mused. "You were so certain it would work. So hopeful. I liked seeing you like that, and I knew you would be disappointed if I told you the truth. So I put it off."

I stared, confounded, waiting for a tip or tilt. But his head was perfectly straight. He turned at my silence, brow furrowing to mirror mine. Looking at me like I was the one being odd, when he was the one admitting that he had lied in a clumsy attempt to spare my feelings.

I said, because I couldn't think of anything more dismissive, "That's sweet, but you should know your oath to me doesn't obligate you to thwart disappointment."

"My oath had nothing to do with it."

I frowned at him. "Why are you being like this?"

"Like what?"

I played with a pleat in my skirt—which was odd, since I didn't remember being in a skirt not a few moments ago. But dreams were strange like that.

I frowned deeper, murmured, "Decent."

"When you're so hellbent on being angry?" he smirked, and it was bewilderingly sweet. "Sorry."

I met his eyes, finally, studying him. Where the orange filaments usually coiled around his irises there were speckles of turquoise, glinting with something besides fury—something less awful but just as prevalent, just as unquenchable. It made me want to touch his mouth.

"You're different here," I mused, and his lip quirked.

"Isn't that the point?" Then he leaned closer, spoke quieter, like he was murmuring a confession or a secret. Like we might be overheard in that secluded, illusory place. "When I dream with you, I feel more…"

His jaw spasmed around the rest, like it was hard to quantify.

"Human?" I offered when the pause lingered too long, and he smirked at me again, that disconcerting, dizzying smile.

"Yes."

"You act like it." And then, for good measure, "It's weird."

He laughed—genuinely, quietly, and my chest squeezed. Because I knew that laugh.

"How long have you spent trying to get me to act less of a monster? And now that I am you're disturbed by it."

"It's too familiar," I admitted. "And that's the strangest part of all."

"Zelda," he mused, and something in the way the word hummed, the way it rolled off the back of his tongue, made it clear the name he said wasn't mine.

I nodded, not quite able to stomp down the urge to fidget. "When I saw you in that scabbard and fresh tunic, that Slate on your hip, it was like you'd stepped out of a memory."

"And that bothers you?"

"Those memories aren't mine," I sighed, letting my head fall back against the blossoms, watching a blush of twilight above my head war with midnight and the earliest of stars. "But I suppose I should be thankful for them."

He laid back, too, watching the night-colors blend. And just like that, I was stargazing with the Calamity, and it didn't feel nearly as wrong as it should have.

"They led you to that shrine you're so fond of," he conceded. "They told you who I was, when the goddesses know I wasn't about to. And if they hadn't led you to that curse she left in Thyphlo Ruins, I would have stopped following you long ago."

"I know," I breathed, a smile tugging at my mouth as glimmers of memory floated up from the depths like flotsam. "You still love her."

"Love her?"

He frowned, turning to study me with eyes that were too luminous, and shifted onto his arm. His jaw clenched as he reached for the rights words, reached for a way to distill the turbulence written all over his face into something easy to convey.

"She anchored me, certainly. For 10,000 years in that void, I was constantly on the brink of losing myself to instinct or hunger or hatred, and I clung to the memory of her like a lifeboat in that goddess-forsaken place. But whatever I felt for her eroded over time like everything else, mutating into something too corrupted to be that." His frown deepened. "It's more like this strange, hardwired obsession. Like I needed her for so long I didn't know how to let go."

I swallowed pity, still determined to be mad even as my stomach gave an awful twist, and arched an eyebrow at him. "She's been the impossible standard to which you've held me since this whole thing started, and now you mean to tell me you aren't in love with her? I don't believe it."

"It's been so long, I can barely remember what she looks like," he admitted, pulling his arm out from under him and rolling to watch the sky again. But then he closed his eyes, brow furrowing in concentration, and murmured, "When I try to picture her, the only face I see is yours."

I stared at him, dumbstruck and perplexed and tempered. I wanted to reach out again to smooth that crease in his brow, ease his eyes open and peer inside until I could puzzle him out. I whispered, "Don't say that."

"Why not?"

Because it wasn't fair. Because it was too tragic. Because I liked hearing it.

"Because it's a horrible thing to say," I deflected instead, and he allowed it with a gentle shrug.

"Not that it matters. I don't think I'm capable of love anymore," he scoffed. But then he glanced my way, watching me askance too long, and amended, "Devotion, maybe."

His eyes were soft and focused, too calm and peaceful and different.

I sat up, trying to escape that penetrating blue, and startled.

We weren't in the tree anymore. We weren't even on Satori. We were in the fields. The night was deep and dark, the endless carpet of green dyed teal in the starlight. When the wind blew, it churned around us like an ocean.

When I dared to glance at him his eyes were closed again, his arms folded behind his head. He was the picture of contentment. I frowned, pulling my knees to my chest and resting my chin on them, and tucked the edge of my skirt under my bare toes.

"I don't know what to do with you when you're like this."

"Decent?"

"Sincere."

He blinked lazily at me, his mouth twisting into a grim half smile. "What have I said that I haven't already told you a thousand times?"

The wind gusted across the hillside, churning the prairie around us into a whispering sea. I tiptoed back through memory, skeptical and startled, remembering. The way he fought his nature for me. The way he protected me, from hunger and from thirst and from magic and from himself. The way his instinct when he was at his most broken was to swear himself to me. The way his hand held mine through Ash Swamp.

The way I had dragged him into my mind, the night before or a lifetime before, and he had given in to the war tearing him apart and—

I took a deep breath.

"Is that what this is?" I scoffed, half to him, half to the gods, watching the breeze carry words down the stretch of field. "Devotion?"

"It's all I can give you," he murmured.

When I turned he was standing, his face turned away from the wind and fronds of grass seed brushing at his knees. He looked dark and faraway. And I thought, in this beautiful place, it didn't suit him at all.

I shifted onto my knees and tucked my feet under myself, pulling at a strand of grass and rolling the grains between my fingers. I said, "It's enough."

He loosed a breathless, bitter laugh without turning. "It isn't."

"It is for now."

He faced me then, his head tilting quizzically, like I was the strangest creature he'd ever laid eyes on. The look he gave me made me feel like something strange, something rare and beautiful and nameless.

"You're always so hopeful," he mused. "Don't you ever worry that you're wrong? That this won't turn out the way you think it will?"

I smiled wistfully. "Every day."

"But you never give up," he murmured. "You're bright, even in the dark. You're like a firefly."

Thunder rolled on the horizon. There wasn't enough light to make out stormclouds; just a patch of darkness blotting out stars, growing steadily and promising rain. He saw it, too, offering me his hand to help me to my feet and leading me up the gentle slope. The grass fronds whipped at our legs as the wind gusted again, tangling my hair out behind me and turning my cheeks pink.

He found us an old oak looming beside an outcropping of boulders just as the heavens opened up, enough to shelter us from the worst of the downpour. I settled in the hollow of the rocks while he lingered beneath the overhang. He was too rigid, like he was answering some long-buried reflex to stand guard, even in that lonely place. I watched him a little longer, the tension in his shoulders, the occasional spasm of his jaw, the way he closed his eyes too tightly and the muscles around them jumped, and sighed.

"You're still hurting," I decided.

"It's not bad."

"You shouldn't be feeling it at all, should you?"

"This is hardly an exact science, Zel," he scoffed, and I huffed at his insouciance.

"Well, is it getting any worse?"

He went to respond too quickly, but then thought better of it, glancing at me over his shoulder, and admitted, "I don't know."

I frowned. This was exactly the sort of thing I had been worried about and tried to prepare for: unknown variables that he refused to let me address. But it wouldn't do any good to berate him for it now. I mumbled instead, "'Zel.'"

"Sorry," he smirked, bemused. "Old habit."

"I don't mind," I said absently, still dwelling, and the look he was giving me when I met his eyes again said he wasn't sure how he felt about that. I steered us back into less turbulent territory. "You said you had three theories: that the relief came from the act of dreaming itself, or the reminder of your own humanity, or something I had done."

"Or a combination of the three, or none of the above," he sighed. "What's your point?"

"Clearly dreaming in and of itself isn't enough," I shrugged. "Let's focus on testing the other two."

"And how do you suggest we do that?"

"Well, it might help if you come here and spend some time dwelling on your rediscovered humanity with me instead of standing over there brooding about how calamitous you are."

He rolled his eyes. But then he moved, passing one last suspicious frown at the storm-shrouded landscape, coming to sit beside me. "How do you know what I'm brooding about?"

"It isn't hard to guess. You're not as complicated as you think you are."

He snorted. "Gods. I'm sorry I asked."

"Well you aren't exactly subtle, are you? You're painfully outspoken, and if anyone says something you don't like, you spell them."

"He had it coming," he smirked wryly.

I didn't bother pointing out that the one who had taken the brunt of his peculiar penchant for ending unpleasant conversations with spells was actually me.

"Poor Revali. That was a cruel trick you played on him."

"He wasn't wrong though," he mused, lips twitching out of his smirk towards a frown. "I should have ended this a long time ago."

I shook my head. "That's not fair. He oversimplified a situation he doesn't understand. You have your reasons."

"Don't be so generous with me," he scowled. "You know it's because of you."

I turned to contradict him, but I couldn't contradict the look in his eyes. It was too helpless, too resentful. Too charged. Like he was looking at something he hated about himself.

"You make me want things I shouldn't want," he said bitterly. "You make me want to live."

My chest warped so tight I couldn't breathe. The hillside tilted a bit, and the rain fell sideways. Drops pooled in the canopy slanted off the leaves, tumbling over us in cold, fat globules. He didn't react, his stare still fixed and intense. I trembled when one slithered down my spine, when another followed a tendril of matted hair down my cheek to the corner of my mouth so I could taste it.

Then live, I wanted to tell him. Promise me you'll live.

Before I could conjure something else, he flinched, eyes pinching closed, and I sighed. He was still hurting. I moved closer, running my knuckles soothingly down his cheek to coax him through the pain, and steeled myself as he leaned blindly into my touch, scraping together my courage. He wouldn't last until we could repair the shrine if we couldn't temper his hunger.

And I could think of at least one thing we hadn't tried yet.

I traced his jaw with my fingertips, waiting for the hunger pangs to pass, for him to open his eyes, my heart fluttering in my throat. He studied me as he came back to himself, hands closing around my wrists as my proximity registered, as he guessed my intent, as his own will to resist teetered on the brink of crumbling

"Zelda," he whispered, a plea and a warning.

I didn't know what I was doing.

I didn't know what I was doing as I leaned closer, as I pressed my forehead to his, as I whispered, shaking, "Don't be afraid."

I didn't know what I was doing as I pressed my lips softly to his, as I dared to taste the rain, as I sighed against his mouth when the jolt from it slipped lazily down my spine.

But I knew it had left him undone, and that there was no such uncertainty in him.

He took me in his hands and pressed forward, confident everywhere I had been hesitant, leading us with sure steps where I had merely stumbled. He coaxed my lips apart, threading his fingers behind my ear, through my hair, angling me just so to deepen the kiss and taste me how he liked. His thumbs stroked me through the motions of it the way I had stroked him through his pain, soft and hypnotic, until I felt weightless and consumed, and I couldn't tell if lightning had struck the oak and split it, letting the rain through, or if the storm I was feeling was purely him.

He slowed, lingering, taking my lip gently in his teeth as he made to pull away like the idea made him ache. He searched my eyes when I finally opened them, sill stroking my face like he was trying to soothe me. He murmured, panting, "Are you all right?"

I nestled closer, frowning, burrowing into his hand and against his forehead like I could burrow into that dream and never wake again. I whispered, "No."

And then I rocked towards his mouth again, much preferring their touch to anything they might say. What could he tell me? That everything I was afraid of wasn't sitting right in front of me, unchangeable and unavoidable? That everything would be all right? I knew it wouldn't be. And he seemed to know better than to try to convince me.

The world tipped again, but it was only him leaning us back against the oak. It was still whole; I could feel it on the back of my hand as I traced the bones in his neck, feeling after the way it made him shiver. He had one hand tucked easily around my waist, and the other played with a strand of my hair, or the long line of my ear, or the ridge of my shoulder. Our kisses were long and slow, warm and easy. Even when thunder rumbled overhead. Even when the fields around us would bend and sway with the roar of a cloudburst. Even when salt ran down my face to my lips and mixed with the taste of rain. He just kissed the corners of my eyes and kept on.

He tipped his head back, his chest rising and falling beneath me as he sighed, and I tasted his chin and throat. He threaded his hands in mine, trying to get my attention, and I dropped my head onto his shoulder, not wanting to give it.

"It's almost dawn," he murmured, and I scoffed.

"I haven't been kissing you that long."

"Dreams are strange, always too slow or too fast," he mused, and when I chanced a glance at his eyes they were soft and unfocused, staring through the canopy. "Daruk is trading watches with Urbosa. She's scowling at me."

"You can see all that?"

"I'm not asleep," he said, like I was being absurd. "You are."

I stifled a smile, rolling onto my side and shivering where the cool air passed between us. I was still fascinated by his warmth, by the way I could feel his pulse thrumming beneath my lips where they were pressed into his neck. If I tried feeling for it in the morning, I had no doubt his blood would slosh so cold under his skin that it would burn and leave a mark. The thought stuck like a thorn in my fingertip.

"You won't be the same," I whispered.

He peered down at me, a sad smile on his lips, and said, "No."

He shifted us, leaning forward to lay me in the grass and hovering like he had every intention of joining me there, or at least kissing me into submission. But he just lingered, watching me. Studying, committing to memory, like this moment was about to be lost forever and never found again. I frowned at him.

"What?"

He smiled, and it was too soft.

"Sleep well, Princess," he said, and pulled away, leaving me staring at the oak boughs.

When I sat up after him he was gone.