No matter how many nights passed- or, in truth, she'd lost all sense of day and night—she could not get used to the pain she felt for Link whenever he fell asleep. He stood up for every hour of the day, and when he slept, his body leaned forward, pulling at his arms until he woke up with a pained grunt. She imagined that he hadn't slept for more than a few hours total since she'd met him.
His arms were ghostly white, his wrists bloodied from the friction of the chain, and his legs numb from their constant use. There were times when she could hear him breathing heavily just from the effort of standing.
"What can I do?" she'd asked initially. But there was nothing that she could do in this case but to keep his strength up by helping him to drink the water they were provided, and to help him eat. Guards had tossed food into their cell at the Demon Lord's request.
So, as she watched his body betray him again, forcing him awake in pain while he tried to sleep, she had to roll over, to look away. But his muffled groans had her springing to her feet, unable to take it anymore.
"Tell me what to do!" she practically yelled at him.
He grimaced and shook his head. "Nothing."
Without warning, she grabbed his bare shoulder, feeling the bone almost too aggressively. But it was the first contact with another human almost in the entire time he'd been here. The abuse of captors, being held down against a table with a knife digging into his flesh, didn't count, and he was surprised that she didn't react with nearly as much surprise as he had.
"Whoa, gods, Zelda, what are you doi—ahhh!" he hissed as she found a gap that definitely shouldn't be there.
"Your shoulder is dislocated."
"I'm hardly surprised," he muttered through gritted teeth, blinking the pain back. All thoughts from before had been forgotten. And he could recognize her single-minded stare by this point, an expression she often got while talking about escape, how he'd done it in the past, ways to do it again.
She glared up at the chain in the wall on cue, confirming his suspicions about where her brain was at. "I'm too short to reach it."
He looked her over pointedly, and she glared at him. But he smiled half-heartedly. "You can't pull it out of the wall. You're not physically strong enough. Though, if it was a battle of wills that kept me here, you'd win with ease."
She began to pace, and he was sure she'd missed his compliment.
"When Ganondorf comes back here, I can try to get you released. Surely he could do that if I give him just the smallest bit of hope."
"What makes you so sure he'll come back?" he asked, desperate for answers from her. She was the most cryptic person he'd ever met. "You keep saying that he's coming back, but to me, we're dead and he's just prolonging it. We need something else, someone else. Eventually, they will put another person in here. These cells keep getting crowded."
"Oh," she snickered. "He'll be back. Trust me."
"That's rich," Link muttered, finally reaching a breaking point. Zelda turned to him, looking genuinely insulted. Link just nodded. "You and I have been here talking for days and there's still something you aren't saying. You want me to trust you, but you don't trust me."
Zelda strode up to him, and he stood up just a little bit taller as she did, staring down at her with a glare that matched hers. He was taller, more muscular, and battle hardened, but he couldn't help but feel intimidated by her in some ways. She had an air about her, one that commanded attention, respect, and a healthy dose of fear.
"I'm keeping you alive in more ways than just giving you water, Link. If I tell you what you want to hear, you'll die, and I can't do anything about that."
"I'm not afraid to die," he countered.
She scoffed. "You are such a soldier. Dying shouldn't be embraced by anyone but the long-lived elderly person who is surrounded by evidence of a life lived to its fullest. I have no intention of dying here, Link, and neither should you."
"You know what, Zelda? I do trust you. Isn't that funny? I trust you every time you take a step in my direction. Do I look like I'm in any position of power here? I'm chained to a wall. If you wanted to escape, do you know what you could do? You could kill me. They'd have to take my body out to make room for someone else in here. You'd have an opportunity."
"Is that what you think of me?" she asked, her voice rising higher. "You think that I'd kill you to escape?"
"Of course not! But you should. You—you're not a commoner. That much is clear. You're someone. I'm just a soldier. My job is to die for the citizens of Hyrule if need be. So, you should do it. You should get out of here."
Zelda crossed her arms and stayed planted directly in front of him. "Do you know what I liked about you, Link? That you were a light in this dark prison. I didn't know that your hope would be so easily snuffed out."
He scoffed. "That's not it. You know that's not it."
"I don't know. Enlighten me."
"Forget it."
Zelda finally took a few steps away from him, needing to look away. After days of being stuck with Link as her primary person to talk to, she'd known there would be a breaking point. They were both two forces of contention. But she also knew that she didn't want to lose the easy way they could talk to one another. The debates they'd had all night, and the stories they'd tell during the day. She didn't want to stay angry at the person she was in this situation with.
"I don't think I told you about my parents," she muttered.
"No, you didn't."
With a deep, steadying breath, she moved to stand beside him, staring at the wall. In front of her, the wall morphed until she could see the throne room. She could see her, her father, her mother, and her younger sister standing behind the final wave of guards meant to defend them as Ganondorf and his men entered the room. She could feel her grip around her sword tighten, though she didn't know how to use it. Her sister looked like a child playing dress-up in her armor.
"They were all murdered in front of me," she finally said.
Her eyes unfocused again, and she could see Ganondorf's forces overwhelm their guards, tossing them to the floor like rags. She could feel her mother's hand grab her wrist in one hand, and her sister's in the other, leaving the King behind to offer her children a final chance to escape. She dragged them into the room behind the throne. And Zelda could feel that same hand be torn away from her, nails scratching her palm in a final, desperate attempt to hold on.
"My parents were first. They were too strong-willed, and Ganondorf knew that they would never give him what he wanted from them. So, he killed my mother, and let my father have one more opportunity to change his mind. When he didn't, he was killed as well.
"I held on to my sister so hard that I must have bruised her. They tried to figure out which of us to kill, and I tried to keep her alive… I tried to…"
She had to stop, feeling the burn of tears in her eyes as she fought them back and turned to Link. For some reason, just his presence was enough to ground her, to remind her that it was a memory, and not something that was happening in front of her eyes once again.
He was looking at her with a soft expression. "I won't judge you if you need to cry," he said, watching her fight the battle to keep them in her eyes.
Blinking, only one tear escaped before the rest remained under her control.
Her sister had been killed because she'd been too young. The throne would have gone to a regent, and she'd have no legal right to cede it over to Ganondorf. It left Zelda as the sole survivor of her family's massacre.
She could still feel the hands that pressed her against the wall, holding her there as she thrashed and fought to break free before the blade could crash down. She could see Ganondorf's wicked, triumphant smile. And that's when she knew she could never let him win. They thought that her sister's death would break her, but it had only strengthened her resolve. If only the Demon Lord knew that if he'd only spared her sister, Zelda would have given him all the power in the world.
But she sniffed and turned her focus back to Link. "I won't let you die, Link, if I can help it."
"Zelda," Link said, his face changing from one of sorrow and empathy to something more similar to hope. "Maybe it's not me who needs to die. Maybe it's you."
She stepped away from him. "Excuse me?"
"Hang on," he said, grabbing the chain above his head and pulling.
Zelda watched his arms strain as he lifted his legs off the ground and pulled them up to his chest, grunting in the pain it caused his body. He let them fall, panting and sweating from the effort.
She made a face, beyond confused, and mildly concerned by his statement still.
"I have a plan," he said with a smile.
A/N: Okay, I'm getting a mad assault of emails telling me I've updated my own fic (as if I didn't know I hit "post") every time I update, so I realize I feel really bad doing that to other people too. So I'm only going to post one chapter today, and then go a little more sporadically with updates just because I feel bad for people's inbox. If it genuinely doesn't bother you though, let me know because I honestly feel so bad about all the emails with the double posts I've been doing.