A/N: Hey guys! Despite appearances, I am still alive. Just a quick note to say that while I will continue to update Calamitous here, everything else I'm writing is going to be exclusively on ao3 and/or tumblr from here on out. Feel free to continue to message me on this platform, or even request that I upload particular stories here if you like, but in general you'll find all my latest stuff elsewhere. You can find me on ao3 and tumblr as embyrinitalics.

Thanks for reading!

Breaking Point

I waited for Impa at the crest of the hill, hugging my arms. I felt too numb to do much else.

I had no idea what had come over me. It was stupid to provoke him, even if he was being insufferable. But while I wanted to believe it was my own audacity that was troubling me—which it did to a degree, as lashing out that foolishly well should have—I knew that wasn't the heart of it. That wasn't where my thoughts were circling, like vultures circling something rotten.

It was his reaction. How easily he had given up the assault, like I had cut him at the throat.

When Impa finally appeared over the ridge, I forgot to smile at her.

She asked, "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," I assured her, still not quite able to force my lips up into anything convincing. "Just a little tired."

She frowned as she put down her things, setting up a small camp near the mouth of the cave.

"I don't know how long these repairs will take," she murmured, laying out a bedroll for me like she was arranging a mattress in a castle suite. Even in circumstances as dire as these, she couldn't seem to put aside those fabled Sheikah loyalties; only now, seeing her through the lens of my predecessor's memories, did I have an inkling of how deep they went, how ancient they truly were. In their eyes I was a still a goddess, and they were still my agents. "It could be a couple of days."

I nodded, watching her kodachi carve a circle in the dirt with a clenched jaw. Wishing, as precious, idle seconds drained, that providing me with creature comforts wasn't so high on her priority list. "It will probably take the others at least that long to return with the flame."

"Well, you know how competitive Purah and Robbie can be," she mused, arranging a ring of stones for a cookfire and then reaching for tinder, the beginnings of a smile in her eyes. "They might well surprise you."

Maybe they would. And perhaps that was supposed to be comforting. But I wasn't thinking so much in terms of days as I was in terms of hours, of moments. She pursed her lips at my silence as she piled kindling, meeting my eyes with too much concern.

"Are you sure you're all right?"

My patience ran out. I grabbed at anything dead in a snap reflex, pulling it all together and sparking fire on it, and dropped the crackling mass where her kindling had been.

"I'm fine."

Her eyes flickered to mine above the sudden heap of fire. She was clearly not fooled, but also seemed to know there was no point in discussing it.

At least we had an understanding.

She asked, finally, levelly, "Is there anything I can do?"

"Yes," I said, wishing my voice was half as steady as hers. "You can fix the Shrine."

She pursed her lips, tilting her head in a strange sort of acquiescence I had only ever seen her use with Father, got to her feet, and led the way into the cavern.

Impa didn't stop to take in the spectacle of the hallway or its strange, ethereal lights, or give any indication that any of it surprised her. The cold that hit us like a wall as we descended slowed her a bit, her body going rigid as she suppressed a shiver and then squared her shoulders to push into it. It hardly registered for me anymore; I'd spent long enough ignoring those instincts that they seemed to have abandoned me altogether.

By the time we reached the chamber, Link had already pried several panels off the vat. He turned as we approached and handed Impa the Slate. The shrine's schematics glistened on the display. Focusing on them was difficult—partly because I couldn't make heads nor tails of them, and partly because I could feel his eyes boring a hole in my head. I looked up at him as Impa scrolled, hoping he'd be put off by confrontation.

It was a flimsy hope. His stare only heated.

"These incomplete sections—it looks like these conduits were meant to run to the Ichor reservoirs beneath the mountain," Impa mused. "We'll need to bypass them entirely."

"I was also able to get more precise readings on exactly how much power is left in that core," he told her, and I took the opportunity to break free. The shrine was much more interesting to look at anyway. "It's not much. I've deactivated a few nonessential systems to conserve energy."

She sighed, dropping her shoulders. "Good. Let's get started."

'Getting started' seemed to consist largely of dismantling everything they could get their hands on. When they had reduced the base to a naked tangle of glowing nodes, they lowered the upper module suspended from the ceiling until it sealed over the vat, and then pried the casing off that section as well, disconnecting the conduits that would've drawn on the inaccessible reservoirs and redirecting them elsewhere.

I was fairly useless, hovering on the sidelines while they busied themselves with the innards of the machine and readings on the Slate. It all felt familiar, insofar as it all lingered half-remembered in my subconscious, but the bits and pieces that floated to the surface were pointless without context. I knew the flow regulators needed to be decoupled before they introduced a new power source. But I didn't know why I knew that, or where they were, or even what they looked like. I said it anyway. Link grunted a pithy agreement.

Impa had spent most of the night before designing a modified receptacle for the flame with Robbie and Purah, but integrating that design into the carapace and existing systems was proving tedious. Or so I gathered, listening to them argue over the best way to overcome what was becoming an increasingly long list of obstacles.

They struggled with rerouting power conduits until sunset, and then with brazier casings and ventilation and ablative heat shielding well into the hours after. I envied their focus, the way there was always something to busy their hands and their minds. I helped with menial tasks where I could—sparking a bit of light, or fetching tools, or holding something in place. But more often than not, trying to be helpful only saw me in closer quarters with Link, which was counterproductive where grazing for distraction was concerned.

Link and I hadn't said an agreeable word to each other since Impa's work brought us grudgingly back together, and whenever I thought I couldn't stand his blatant refusal to acknowledge me for one more second, his eyes would find mine, all glaring and furious and hateful, and I would long for all the moments leading up to it where I had been invisible.

Near midnight I finally caved to Impa's insistence that I take a break to eat a meal and get some rest, though I yielded less out of hunger or fatigue and more out of frustration. I left some food and water beside the shrine for her, which she thanked me for but made no move to touch, and then dragged myself up the stairs to the small camp just outside the cave entrance.

I summoned the fire again for warmth and stared up at a glistening, indifferent sky, devoid of appetite and too exhausted to sleep. Urbosa's party must have reached Hateno by now, and while I certainly hoped Revali and the others were close to Akkala, I really had no way of judging. I rattled my brain anyway, imagining the route as the crow flies and as the rivers flowed, estimating optimal travel speed accounting for resistance and bad weather. And of course there was the matter of actually finding the flame, if it still burned in the first place. It was a bit like counting sheep, guesses crossing and blurring until they were arriving in five hours, or three, or yesterday.

I fell restlessly into nothing. I didn't dream—in either the shared or the usual variety.

It was pleasant to just sleep for a change.

When I woke again, it was less like drifting through a murky surface and more like being yanked sideways out of it; the curtain pulled open instead of drawn shut. It took me a moment to get my bearings, to swallow the tepid aftertaste of fading magic. It was still dark. The fire was a pile of embers. And Link's eyes were fixed on me over their sparse light, glowing a peculiar shade of orange.

I rubbed an eye as I eased myself up, scowling. "You couldn't have just jostled me or called my name like a normal person?"

"I did call your name," he murmured, voice gravel. "Twice."

I refrained from rolling my eyes, but only just. Heaven forbid he should call a third time. I asked instead, "Have you finished with the shrine?"

He shook his head, slid a foot out from under himself stiffly to sit down out of his crouch, gripping his side. "Impa's still working on it."

I studied him for a moment in the stilted silence that followed. His breaths were too shallow, his shoulders too rigid. The lines on his face too deep. I swallowed my pride, since he apparently wasn't about to, and moved closer, scraping together all the gentleness I could muster.

"Did you come to dream?" I asked.

His jaw clenched before he answered. "No. No more dreams."

"Don't be stubborn. It will help—"

But before I could finish his muscles seized, back arching and teeth gritting—

—and he doubled over and retched.

Pinkish tendrils webbed in black oozed out from between his teeth as he caught his breath, over his lip, pooling and coagulating where it fell like something alive. His shoulders heaved, his body taut with pain, or perhaps restraint. The mass that had come from him pulsated in the grass, writhing with something like a heartbeat. I had seen it before, in another life: seeping out of the ground, clinging to ruins and corpses, burning an irreversible path of destruction. Swallowing worlds. Corrupting and distorting into its own twisted nature.

Ganon.

"Don't," he growled, his hand clamping over my wrist. I had drifted closer without realizing it, my hand outstretched. He was still quaking, his body rattling with adrenaline and effort.

"I know what this is," I whispered, and he sighed at me.

"Then you should know better than to touch it."

He let me go, held a trembling hand over the malice. It lifted in pulsating globules, absorbing with a vaporous gurgle into his palm, and he kneaded his fist like it ached. The ground beneath was blackened and singed. He rolled onto his hip, pushing closer to the mountain, shoulders hunched and brow threaded.

"This body is falling apart," he panted. "If your friends don't show up soon—"

"Just hold on," I breathed, reaching again. "Let me help you."

"It won't help," he snapped, and it was so raw that I hesitated, and then withdrew. "Dreaming numbs the pain, but it doesn't slow the process. It doesn't stop what's happening to me." He tipped his head back against the stone, swallowing, and shut his eyes. "I can't afford to be numb."

I watched him labor through the aftershocks, at a loss. The muscles at his neck sprang taut, his eyes pinching harder and his throat bobbing. He was miserable, and I was powerless. It was awful. And it made no sense at all. I circled a hole in his logic, waiting for him to come down from the hunger pangs, but trying to puzzle him out only brought me to the same dead end again and again.

"Why did you come to me," I posed slowly, "if not to dream?"

His eyes flickered to mine again, narrowed and fiery and hurting. Fixing me in a glare that wasn't a glare at all. Daring me to ask again, and begging me not to.

And all at once, it wasn't such a mystery.

I frowned, lifting my hand from where it had dropped between us—carefully, slowly—to cover his fist, bunched at the knee of his trousers. I slid one fingertip between his knuckles, and then another, gently coaxing his fist open. And for once he just yielded, bowing his head as he let me thread our fingers. Looking away, like it was easier for him to accept the scrap of comfort if he could pretend it wasn't there. It made my heart twist.

Of course he was afraid. Who wouldn't be?

I slid a little closer, gave his fingers a gentle squeeze where they shook beneath mine.

"It's ok," I whispered.

He loosed a breathless, bitter laugh, and then moved to fumble with the clasp on his baldric one-handed. I wanted to object as he slipped the scabbard off his back, wanted to argue when he held it out to me. But if he was making concessions, then I had to as well.

"Zelda," he murmured when I hesitated, his eyes fire and his voice all warning. "Please."

"All right," I sighed, taking it with both hands to sling it awkwardly over my back. "All right."

He melted to the stone again, satisfied. And when I slipped my hand back over his fist, he let me. He focused on breathing, trying to keep the swells full and even, and my mind ran a mile a minute, trying to conjure some way to ease his burden. But Impa was repairing the shrine, and the others were fetching the flame. If he wasn't willing to dream, there was nothing to do but wait.

So we waited. The baldric across my shoulder was heavy, and only felt heavier every time he flinched under my hand, malice spuming out from between his teeth or spilling from the corner of his mouth. Sometimes it dripped like a nosebleed, or streaked from his eye like scalding tears, and each time he pulled it back beneath his skin it seemed to take just a little more effort, just a little more time. Seemed to hurt him just a little bit more.

An hour passed like that, and then nearly two. The sky was brightening with impending dawn when he suddenly split open beneath his ribs, the malice blooming viscid and purplish through his tunic. He stared down at it blinkingly, swallowing, and then pressed the heel of his hand into the wound, urging the malice down again. It left the tunic singed and his expression shuttered.

I brushed at his bangs, drawing eyes that sparked so amber and furious they should have been frightening. But all I could see was that slender, tortured ring of blue, smothered in so much fire, trying to stay alive. I soothed, my voice remarkably steady, "It's going to be all right."

"You have a startling knack for that," he scoffed, but it was tempered.

"What?"

He trembled, "Lying."

He flinched again, his body rolling as the malice punched another hole through him. It spewed in ropes from the side of his neck, as though someone had sliced through an artery. He reached blindly to mend it, and I met him halfway, cupping his wrist to guide him. I drew his hair aside, tilted his head to expose the wound better as I pressed his palm to it. Frowned as his eyes pinched, as he gritted his way through taming it.

I thought of the Lost Woods, of the way I had driven the Calamity back so he could claim the Sword. Of the way he yet expected me to keep it from escaping while the blade devoured it—when he would be stabbed through, and wouldn't be able to do it on his own.

I thought of the first time I'd seen this struggle, when he nearly lost control at the mouth of the Great Hyrule Forest, and all the times I'd watched him suffer through it since. I thought of how long he'd been fighting, how long he'd borne a burden that never should've fallen to him.

I thought of the rivers and paths and guesses all turned to sheep that had sent me to sleep the night before, now circling like hands on a clock, red-eyed and devouring each other.

He couldn't do this alone.

I called on power until my skin luminesced, until the warmth wafted off me in a gentle breeze, unsure and unresolved, and reached for him. He cracked an eye open when either the glow or the heat gave me away, flinching. But he didn't stop me, so I pressed on, taking his jaw in my hands.

The malice burned as it receded, the bite of it bitter and fleeting, like snuffing out a candle with my palm. I couldn't see any outward change, but I could feel him changing, feel the tendrils and spores retreating out from under my touch. He hissed through clenched teeth, tensing as I pushed it down, as I pressed it deeper.

"Am I hurting you?" I asked. "Should I stop?"

But his hand slapped urgently over my wrist, holding me still. "No. Don't stop."

I nodded, steeling myself and feeding it a little more. I winced when his fingers bit into my wrist, when his head bowed and his eyes pinched shut and his breath stilled, and then stuttered back to life again with a cry.

Needle and thread, binding the patchwork back together, stitch by stitch…

He panted as the pressure eased, as the heart of malice in him congealed and writhed, momentarily subdued. His shoulders sagged, a sigh rippling through him, and dropped his hand. I sighed too, relieved to have given him a reprieve, however brief. I let the power fade, but when I tried to withdraw his hand shot out, locking around my wrist again. His fingers bit to the bone, and didn't ease until I let my hand drift back to its place cradling his jaw.

"I'm not going anywhere," I promised. "I won't leave you."

That calmed him a bit, his eyes turning listless as he let himself lean a little into my touch.

"You should," he panted, even as his fingers gave a reflexive squeeze. "I don't understand why you don't. Why you aren't recoiling in horror."

"Because I'm not afraid of you," I said, perplexed at how he could still not grasp the simple truth that had driven me from the first, narrowing my eyes, touching his mouth. "And because against every bit of good sense I have left, I care too much about you to run."

He frowned softly, more thoughtful than furious, his thumb brushing idly over the back of my hand. He murmured, "You're in love with a memory."

It wasn't so much an accusation as it was an apology. I smiled grimly, whispered, "Maybe."

His eyes searched mine. It hardly felt like a secret after everything we'd been through; but it was also as close to the admission he had tried to pry out of me the day before as we had ever come. The conflict scrawled across his face said he didn't know what to do with it.

It was the conflict that drew me in. The undeniable ambivalence of it, whispering that some part of him must have wanted it. Whispering that, for all his antagonism, hearing me admit it had left him warmed.

I drifted closer, drinking courage from the way he quietly allowed it, and pressed my lips experimentally to his. It didn't hurt so much the second time, the cold not as much of a shock. I shivered as I swept my tongue along the firm edge of his mouth, as I tasted that unmistakable petrichor, as I let my teeth drag softly against his bottom lip when I withdrew, throat aching from the frost. I hadn't quite closed my eyes, and neither had he; his gaze met mine again, half-lidded, calculating. Disturbed.

But then he yielded to it as he had so many times before, resigned and tired and mildly irritated, threading the hand that wasn't already covering mine through my hair and dragging me closer again.

His mouth on mine was frigid and warm at once, a strange amalgam of a nature he couldn't quite mask and an effort to make his touch less painful. It made my heart stammer in my chest, made my fingers itch to cling to him. I felt it in my spine when he deepened the kiss, felt the indisputable sense of right and wrong mingling behind my ribs when his fingers slid behind my neck, holding me firmly enough that I couldn't have pulled away if I tried. He took my lip in his teeth as he finally drew back for breath, holding it longer than I had, biting harder, dragging his teeth slower, like it hurt him to let me go.

"I can't breathe without you," he whispered bitterly, confessed, his voice strained and barely there and tortured. "I can't breathe, and I hate it."

The malice surged again, driving hungrily towards the surface, and he clenched his teeth and dropped his face, trying to bury it. I put my hand over his heart, channeling power again, urging the glow. Casting it around the darkness in him like a net, when all I wanted was for him to be free.

"I wasn't lying," I insisted, not quite able to keep the tremor from my voice as he tipped his head back again and shut his eyes, breathless. "You're going to be all right. I promise."

The sun peeked over the horizon, throwing milky, orange light over us. It danced on his face with the sealing power, color and texture blending on scars and skin. He slumped when it passed, exhausted.

"Promises," he panted, "you can't keep."

But then his hand found mine, weaving our fingers and holding tight.

And perhaps that would always be the nature of this, of us. Lies that weren't lies, promises that weren't promises. A tether between us neither of us asked for, and that neither of us could sever.

I moved alongside him, resting a shoulder on stone and a hand on his heart. Stationing myself by him as his protector, or his caretaker, or whatever else he needed me to be, and putting aside the rest. One way or another, I was going to see him through this.

I had to.

Dawn came and went. It was quiet; the birds that should have announced the sunrise had long since sensed the danger and fled. I was itching to see how much progress Impa had made, if the shrine was any closer to being whole than it had been the night before, but Link was too fragile to leave, even for a moment. The malice lashed out every few minutes, looking for an escape; wearing him down; chipping away at his defenses.

It was all taking its toll. His eyes burned hotter. The veins in his arms and neck gradually stained a sickly purple I couldn't purge, and he tremored under my touch like he was wracked with fever. And the sun crawled ever higher.

I watched the sky, the river, the road, for a flicker of blue flame, reached with my mind for shadows. But the Plateau was quiet, barren save for the monks cloistered away in their temple and a Sheikah modifying an ancient shrine with tools 10,000 years removed. The longer my vigil lasted, the more time and space seemed to stretch—leaving us infinitely far from help, and the world around us at a standstill. But I didn't dare give into hopeless thoughts. I barely had the energy to conjure them.

I was a livewire. Even in the lulls I couldn't rest, every tremor or sharp breath sending me spiraling towards power. He was deteriorating so quickly, and it was awful, and terrifying. But I put my own feelings aside. I couldn't despair. Not when he had held on so long for me.

He grimaced, the Calamity in him writhing against mortal chains. But it wasn't clawing for the surface, wasn't near enough for me to drive it back. Almost as though it had learned that trying to escape would get it burned. And there was nothing I could do to keep it from devouring him from the inside out.

"Do you remember two nights ago, in front of Cotera's fountain?" I breathed, reaching for something to distract us from the unremitting misery. Reaching for a good memory. But we had so few of those. "When you admitted that you'd followed me because you missed me?"

He cracked an eye open to glare, panting. "That's not how I remember it."

"I was so furious with you," I smiled brokenly. "I wanted so badly to be angry, and you chose then of all times to be decent. To make it hard to be. I stayed angry for half the dream afterwards."

"That I remember," he managed.

His breath stuttered and his back arched, and I held my smile in place by sheer force of will. It seemed to pass, his spine dropping and the lull enough for him to drag a few gasps of air, but it was on him again in the moment next, the pain coming in wave after breathless wave.

Gods, but I wanted to tell him I was sorry. For his suffering. For demanding more of him, when he had already given everything. For the broken promises. For all of it. But the truth was I had the sword, and could end it for him whenever I wanted, and I was still choosing to let this go on.

I knew what he would say. How sorry could you possibly be?

He strained, teeth grinding and neck taut and temple bulging, and my mask nearly slipped. Why was it lasting so long?

His eyes sprang open again, fiery and unfocused, and he growled and hissed through his teeth as it finally ebbed. I brushed at his bangs, coaxing him through the last of it, drawing his eyes. They locked with mine, burning and glowing. Searching. Seeing me, as though he were seeing me for the first time.

I put on another, softer smile, even as I felt my brow knitting. Even as something in his stare made my stomach knot. I whispered, "What is it?"

It took him a moment to respond, like he had to dredge the answer up from someplace deep, someplace old. But his eyes never left mine, as though the answer was somewhere in them, and when he finally drew breath to speak, it made my heart stammer.

"I hate you," he grated out between his teeth, and I flinched with how much he meant it. "I've hated you from the first day I laid eyes on you. I wanted to rip your throat out. I wanted to carve you open down the seam and watch you bleed out, all breathless and helpless and pathetic. I still want that." He bit down and clamped his eyes shut, his hands clawing at the sides of his head. "I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!"

"Link, come on," I warbled, trembling, rattled, and reached for him. "You have to hold on—"

But the moment I touched his face, his hand snatched my wrist and twisted. The other found my throat.

I froze, gasping against a hold that was much too tight. Not enough to smother me, but strong enough that I was left with no doubt that he could. Strong enough that I knew one coil of his fingers could snap my neck.

"I always warned you this would happen," he murmured, angling his grip higher, applying that much more pressure so he could watch me gasp for air. His eyes were equal parts entranced and ravenous, even as stray tears slipped out of them and skipped down his face. "You wouldn't listen."

He rolled to his feet, dragging me with him by the neck, the pain washing out of him as he gave into base instincts. As he stopped resisting. I clawed at his grip, fighting for breath and clinging to the ground by my toes. But he kept me at arm's length, watching me struggle. Not quite able to end me as swiftly as he should have. Maybe because the good in him persisted. Maybe because he wanted me to suffer more than he wanted me out of the way.

"Link, please," I choked out, tears budding in my eyes, calling on power until it wafted off me in golden tendrils. Enough power to swallow him whole. "Please don't make me do this."

He stepped in closer and tilted his head, hushing me softly. When he smiled, it was the same gentle, dizzying smile from our dreams. "He can't hear you."

Then a flicker of blue out of the eastern sky caught his attention, drawing his eyes aside. A winged figure with a captured lick of flame in his talons, barreling towards us.

Before I could so much as draw breath to scream, Link had conjured power—hot, invisible, rippling—and sent it hurtling through the air. The explosion blasted Revali from the sky and tore the blue fire from his grasp.

The lantern fell like a stone—twirling, fluttering, the tiny flame flickering in its cage like a heartbeat—hit the ground, and shattered.