A/N: I hear that FFN is finally back up and running again, so hopefully this chapter has no problems appearing, unlike the last few! What bad timing too, in terms of this fic! If you missed chapter 54 because of the weird issue, it should be available now!

Link twirled the knight chess piece around in his hands. A week ago, when they'd brought her here from the castle, Ellie had found it in Zelda's bag of things that she'd left back in the medical tent.

He leaned back in the chair, unable to move very much himself anyway, and watched her, hoping that he'd see her stir or twitch or cough or blink or something.

It became the central part of his daily ritual, which consisted of very few things. He would wake up in his designated medical room, two doors down from the one Zelda was in, as per Shad's orders. Link shared his room with two other injured soldiers who's company he'd been enjoying for the past week, but it still wasn't enough to make him content to be so far from Zelda. One of his roommates had been completely paralyzed in the battle, but his main coping mechanism had become humor. Link was happy to indulge in those conversations. He needed the distraction much as the soldier did. The other had sustained a small injury that had burst into a massive infection and left him bedridden. It had been Shad's idea to give Link a different room to motivate him to move from room to room as his light exercise to slowly work his battered body where Link would stay for several hours before tiring from too many potions and exertion before going back to his room to sleep.

The injured had taken up residence in a nearby town, most of whom had evacuated long before the battle. It left plenty of space to treat everyone.

For the first few days, Link had been unable to get out of bed, and Shad had given him potion after potion. When Shad had taken off all of Link's armor to assess the extent of the damage, he'd been horrified.

The worst injury was the one Shad had treated in the field: the massive laceration down his face. It ran from above his eyebrow down to his jaw, and crossed in the middle with a separate wound, the one from the arrow. There was also a long cut down the side of Link's arm from Shad and Link's last-ditch attempt to save Zelda.

But his body had been battered with horrible, deep bruises. His ribs were jutting straight out of his skin in places where they'd fractured or cracked. There was a gash where his armor had bent into him during his fight with the unnatural dinofols. His neck showed evidence of choking and a few smaller cuts. His right hand was burning with an infection, likely from a rusty blade. His face was swollen from being hit and landing against any and everything. There were distinctive boot marks on his chest, two deep cuts along his thigh, two broken fingers, and his back was entirely purple, green, and blue.

Owl had dosed Link with heavily potent potions that left him unconscious so he could deal with several of Link's internal wounds without worrying about involuntary movements. Link looked like a patched up pair of pants. Stitches covered his face, the back of his head, his side, his leg, his hand, his arm, his neck. Gods, if there was a place that he hadn't been injured, it wasn't easily found.

But once he'd been able to get back on his feet, at least enough to vaguely shuffle across the room, he'd spent most of his days pacing—though he was chastised for that—or resting by Zelda's bed.

For days, there hadn't been a single sign of movement from her. The physicians had practically ripped her open in multiple places in their attempts to save her, and still, she didn't need so much as a potion to relax her. She couldn't be woken. They'd snapped her bones into place in her wrist, setting them without so much as a twitch from her. But she was breathing. Shallow, strained, but breathing. And that was something.

Link set the chess piece down, now—a week later—healing from the worst of his injuries. His face was no longer stitched together pieces of his skin, but two long, red, healing scars. They'd be permanent and noticeable, even when they were done healing. His fingers were wrapped still, as was most of his body, in some way. His back completely wrapped in bandages to keep a small rod in place, a gentle reminder not to move as often as he did. His ribs were left uncovered, being mostly internal and difficult to wrap. There was a sunken-in stretch of skin where his rib had moved back when it broke, and he was tried to remember not to bend. He was in loose pants that hung lightly off of him, keeping the wounds on his thigh hidden from most people. He didn't wear a shirt—the very motion of tugging his arms through the sleeves proved to be too difficult for now—but he didn't need to. He had bandages wrapped around most of his torso acting in some ways as a shirt would. They covered most of his stitches, including the one on his face, just barely below his eye so he could see, since he had a habit of popping a few from overexertion or movement, no matter how many lectures he received.

It was no different as Link stood up and limped around the room, spending his limited pent-up energy as he wondered again if it was his fault that Zelda was in this state.

Gods, he could find a thousand different things he could have done differently. Maybe he could have gotten to her faster. Maybe it had been him and his panic that had left her this way. He'd forgotten to do something, or he'd pushed Shad too far in his demands that she be saved. Shad and Owl had assured him that it wasn't his fault, but the nagging idea never went away.

Link's body was convulsing as he clutched Zelda for dear life. One of his arms kept her supported, and the other stayed against her neck, praying to the Goddess that he never felt the light drumming of her pulse stop.

After she'd gone limp in his arms, he couldn't remember what he'd said to her, but he could remember that he never stopped talking into her ear, hoping that somewhere deep down, she could still hear him.

His head whipped up at the sound of racing footsteps, but Link couldn't even find the strength to reach for his own knife. He was beaten down in every way between his fight with Ganondorf and returning to Zelda. Besides, his arms couldn't let go of her if he wanted to.

"Wh—" Shad said, bursting into the room before skidding to a halt, eyes widening. "Is she…"

Link's head shook frantically. "No," he choked out. "Help her, please," he begged.

Shad looked her over before his eyes went to the pooled blood on the floor and brought a hand despairingly to his mouth. "Gods, how much of this blood is hers?"

Link felt himself stutter as he looked himself over. He couldn't bring himself to say it, but the silence was clear: most of it.

"Link," Shad said, trying to place a comforting hand on his shoulder. "She's lost too much blood. If I tried to do anything at all for her, she'd just bleed out. I'm sorry. We're not equipped for this here."

"What do you need? I'll get it."

"You are in no condition to move around either."

"I don't give a shit, Shad," Link spat, his fear turning to venom. "Are you not going to try to save the damn Princess of Hyrule, or am I going to hold her until she dies because you're less than half the physician I thought you were?"

Shad didn't recoil from the burning rage emitting from Link. He just squeezed Link's shoulder, understanding. "Link, we have nothing here. I need blood—"

"Take mine. Take the whole damn vein from my arm if that's what you need."

"Link, please," he sighed, though it was impossible to stop his own regretful tear from spilling. "Let me help her pass in peace."

He reached for the hilt of the knife in her abdomen, but before Link could stop himself, his hand was crushing Shad's wrist, stopping him with far more force than he'd intended. "Don't. Don't touch her."

Shad made a gesture, a silent promise to back down, and Link let go, returning his fingers to the pulse on her neck.

"Link… I'll hurt her more than help her. Your blood might kill her. We don't have the equipment to test it. We have nothing here, and she doesn't have time for me to return with everything we'd need."

"There are fairies in this castle. Two. She told me once. They can save her."

Shad's eyes lit up for a moment but dulled in the same second. "We don't know where they are. It will take too long and she'll be gone."

"Why are you determined to let her die? You're her friend, and we both trusted you!" Link snapped. "She's fighting to keep breathing, so fight for her!"

Shad ran his hands through his hair and pulled his bag off his shoulders, sitting down in the blood with nowhere else to go. "If, by the Goddess' miracle, she survives, she's going to get a horrible infection. I'm going to have to improvise these tools, use dirty instruments, cut into her on a dirty, bloody floor. She's at a high risk of death even if she makes it out of this room. Just be prepared for that."

Link nodded vigorously, his expression lightening marginally as turned to his two soldiers who'd returned with Shad. "You have to find those fairies. If Ganondorf knew about them, they'll be somewhere he can quickly get to. One of his soldiers must know. Finn can get it out of them. Start in the places he frequented the most."

Shad stopped pulling his things out and looked over at Link, taking a deep breath. "Link, Finn was injured. We found him just after leaving you. He lost his leg, seven or eight others were killed. We treated him as best we could…"

After Link had done several laps around the room, he sat in the chair between the two beds. Only this time, he didn't face Zelda.

"You bother me when you do that," Finn muttered, glaring weakly at Link. "Please sit still."

"I can't."

"Then do anything but pace, please."

Link glanced at the dip in Finn's blanket where his leg should be. "Sorry."

"Why not get some air?"

Link ran his hands across his face. "I can't go that far yet. Stairs. Shad will kill me if I tried anyway."

"Then go pace in the hallway next time."

Snorting, Link glanced back at Zelda, checking on her for the eighth time that minute. "The only two people I give a shit about right now are in this room."

"Did you go to the funeral for the fallen?"

"Yeah, I managed to go to that. Shad practically had to carry me down the stairs." He felt their losses hitting too heavily and turned to his best friend with a rueful smirk. "I tossed your leg into the pyre for you."

Finn cackled. "Oh, thanks."

Link stood up and spun his chair to face Zelda, grabbing her hand as he rested his head down against his arms in one of the few comfortable positions he'd found recently. His eyes were on her chest, watching the steady rise and fall that proved she was breathing, even if he couldn't hear her small breaths. It was a small comfort.

"You fell a little too hard, man," Finn said, watching Link's back, but knowing exactly what was happening. "You never have half-assed anything, have you?"

Finn had only woken two days earlier from his own potion-induced sleep to let his injury heal. Owl had removed more of the remaining parts of his leg, and there was very little remaining. He'd suffered a slight infection that he was on the tail-end of recovering from.

Since Finn had caught them together before the battle, Link had offered to explain anything, so Finn felt thoroughly caught up.

Snickering, Link rolled his eyes and buried his head into the mattress, eyes burning with exhaustion. "Well, I love her. Can't really help that one. We already tried."

"Shad told me what you did. He said you're the only reason she's still alive now."

"Mmm, Shad's a liar," Link muttered halfheartedly. "She'd do it for me. She's done some crazy things for me. She fought Reese off of me when he stabbed me, she killed someone who tried to kill me. I mean, gods…"

His words trailed off as he looked at her with admiration. He knew that if anyone could come back from the brink of death, it was her. And if she couldn't do it, no one could.

He looked over at the long bandage that covered most of his forearm.

"It's going to hurt," Shad warned as he brought the knife deeply into Link's arm. Truth be told, Link was already in so much pain that he barely felt it. "We're just going to do this until someone finds that fairy. If you pass out, I have to stop, and I can't risk guessing on a second person's blood. Using you is enough of a risk. She'll die if we're wrong."

"She'll die if we're wrong, and she'll die if we do nothing." Link watched Shad wipe some of the blood away so he could get a clear look into Link's arm. "You've got this, Shad," he said. He regretted his earlier words.

Shad looked like a panicked mess as he worked to secure Link's arm. "We need that fairy. I can't… I can't do this without it."

There were two soldiers guarding the doors to ensure none of Ganondorf's stragglers made their way inside. The other available soldiers were scouring the castle looking for a fairy. The rest were still fighting. With no one leading either side, the remaining fighters didn't know that the Demon King and Princess of Hyrule were both down.

As much as Shad wanted to call for Oton for assistance, he knew that there were hundreds of soldiers that needed tending. So, Link and Shad were the only two in the room, and Link was about to be very little help.

"Okay," he said finally, retrieving his second knife from the roaring fire in the other room before taking his place. He had his bag of equipment wide open, everything as ready as possible. There were tubes, vials, tools. Link didn't understand any of it. It would all be on Shad. "Lie down, Link. This will make you dizzy and weak after a while, and you're already in bad shape. Let's just hope you last longer than it takes them to return with the fairy."

"I will. How will you know if it's working?"

Shad let out a strangled noise and kept his eyes off Link. "If she doesn't die, it's working."

Link woke up in the chair, still holding on to Zelda. He rubbed his eyes and sat up, in pain from the contorted way the metal against his back and his stupid sleeping position had fought against one another. Finn was asleep as well, despite the sun in the window. The potions they'd all been taking had thrown everyone completely off.

"Link?" a voice from the doorway said, and he realized he'd woken thanks to their presence.

He looked up to see Maryse and Ellie. "Hey," he mumbled, taking a deep breath and pushing his hair back before slowly standing. "I'll get out of your way."

Ellie passed him, her wide eyes on Zelda as they were every time she entered the room. She often enjoyed sitting with the Princess, filling her in with stories of the goings on of the town. There was ample gossip, but most of the town was filled with injured soldiers, so a majority of her stories involved how she'd helped treat different wounds, or helped a woman walk for the first time since the battle.

But today wasn't a social call. Maryse was here to take care of Zelda, to help her take some potions, sustenance, to wash her, to move her around, to check on her wounds.

Shad had forced the same rule on Link that he'd done to Zelda. Link wasn't allowed to help, not in his state, but specifically because of his feelings for Zelda. While Shad admitted that Link fiercely fighting him about treating Zelda had saved her life, it was also proof that Link had very little control of himself when it came to Zelda.

Ellie went to shake Finn awake. She'd become quite good at assisting with things that weren't particularly medical in nature. She helped him into a chair with wheels on it and brought him outside the room for some 'air'.

As Link passed Maryse, she patted his shoulder and gave it a reassuring squeeze. He offered her a weak smile. Everyone knew about him and Zelda. After her display before the battle and his behavior, there were very few people who hadn't figured them out on some level.

"She'll wake up," Maryse offered.

Link nodded and stepped into the hall, pressing himself against the wall for support. Simply standing sent sharp pains through his entire back.

Returning to his room, he all but collapsed onto his bed, but saw a letter on his pillow, grabbing it first.

"Link, I'm glad to hear you are well, and I regret to hear of the Princess's unchanged state. I am packing now and will arrive in a few days. Thank you for your latest update. I passed your message along. Prince Daltus has settled in and is assuming control of Damel, so he will not be joining me yet. He has given several documents to bring down, and I will fill you in on all the details then. Rest assured, we remained safe, despite the threat. And our surprising allies have also mostly returned home, though Prince Daltus is entertaining a few at the house still. A letter from you on the Princess' behalf might be useful. Prince Daltus recommends it. Please let Finn know that I am thinking of him and praying to the Goddess for him, as I am for all of you. I will see you all soon. -Seres"

Link smiled to himself and set the letter aside, too tired to do anything with it yet.

When he'd first woken up, he'd heard rumors of an attack on Damel, and had immediately sent Seres a letter that had gone with their fastest rider. She'd informed him that King Zora's river scouts had intercepted a soldier, a messenger from Viscen, warning about the impending attack. He'd already sent his soldiers south through the waterways, not being land fighters themselves, and they'd warned Seres of the attack before it could happen, their increased forces and lack of a signal from Ganondorf stemming off any attack.

After that, for reasons he didn't understand, everyone had turned to Link for answers.

But he was far too tired to deal with the letter or any of his apparent responsibilities. No one had approached him for the day, and he was going to take advantage of his free time. As his eyes drifted shut, his brain kept bringing him places he didn't want to go.

"We've got one!" a soldier yelled, bursting into the room.

Link was struggling to keep himself conscious. Even just turning his head made him nauseous and had the world spinning.

But Shad nearly cried in relief, grabbing the bottle with the fairy in it.

His face fell when he looked at it, sparking concerned looks from everyone in the room.

"It's not a fully grown fairy. This one is a child. There were no others?"

The soldier ran her hands along her face. "No. There was smashed glass nearby, so perhaps there had been a second one at some point, but this was all we could find."

"What's wrong?" Link managed.

Shad worked on undoing the lid to the bottle. "Not only is it cruel to force a child fairy to heal someone, but they are simply not strong enough for it yet. This will not fully heal Zelda. It will be the equivalent of a potion, not a true fairy."

"Can you still use it?" a soldier asked.

"I will," Shad said through gritted teeth. He certainly didn't want to, but for the Princess, he would. "But now I have no choice but to operate entirely."

And they did use the fairy. It allowed everyone some room to breathe as the battle started to settle down. And it gave them time to wait for help to arrive as Shad worked delicately on Zelda's wounds, stitching up wounds and draining blood from places it most assuredly didn't belong in.

Owl and a team of volunteers eventually managed to arrive with supplies when it was calm enough. He was surprised by Shad's willingness to play the odds, and they worked quickly to find a suitable soldier willing to offer their blood in Shad's painful, makeshift, unsterilized, short tube as a replacement for Link, who was drifting in and out, no longer able to follow Shad's basic instructions or clench a fist.

The last thing he'd seen was Zelda lying beside him. In the next, he found finding himself in a clean room.

The same room he woke up in now.

The sun was setting through the window, and he rolled out of the bed to return to Finn and Zelda, opting to go back instead of trying to sleep once again. When he went in, Zelda was alone. Finn still hadn't returned. Link figured Ellie had managed to get his chair down the steps for a better breath of air, so Link took his seat beside Zelda and took her hand again, resuming his usual place.

"So," he said, resting his other hand on his chin, relieved for the rare times he could talk to her without anyone listening in. "Don't hate me, but I did another thing. Everyone was stressed out about what to do with Ganondorf's body, and gods, I couldn't even guess what you would have wanted, but they kept asking me as if I'd know, so I told them to just keep it somewhere for now. I don't even know where, but I wrote to Daltus again for his opinion. Sounds like Seres might have that answer. She'll be here in a few days. I didn't think burying him or offering him a warrior's pyre was appropriate. I couldn't think of anything else to do other than to ask Daltus for help. I'm sure he's loving that.

"They kept asking me about your family's bodies as well. This time, I know what you want for them, but I also know you'd want to be there, so I told them to settle your family into the royal crypt for now. It's the best I could think of. I don't know what in the nine hells I'm doing or why everyone is coming to me with these questions. Ellie said it's because I'm close to you, but I don't get how that makes me qualified for this.

"Oh, they keep calling me Commander, too. It was fine during the battle. I'm not going to stop a fight to correct them every time, but now while we're all safe, they won't stop. People I don't even know keep calling me that. I'm not Ashei. I'm not even close.

"Bardo came by again this morning. He's doing better. I know he told you all that, but… I don't know. I just hope you can hear us. Maybe you can. Maybe you just can't respond. Or… I don't know."

He leaned back in his chair, needing a moment to breathe through his own pain shooting through him. He knew it was time to find Shad for another potion.

But his eyes unwittingly closed again, still tired from earlier.

And as usual, he saw her in his dreams.

He was in an unfamiliar room, clearly somewhere in the palace, sitting in front of a large fireplace that warmed the entirety of the room. And Zelda was lying her head on his lap, one of her arms bent to hold his upper arm as his fingers ran through her hair. He smiled down at her and his other hand rested on her stomach, clasped in her own hand the way he held hers while she slept. And even if it was only a dream, seeing her healthy, with a soft smile that betrayed very little but contentment... it had him breathe a sigh of peaceful relief.

"Have you ever felt like something bad happened, and you've been given a second chance here?"

He didn't know what she meant, but judging from the pristine state of the bedroom he was apparently in, he imagined that his dream was taking place in the castle before Ganondorf.

But dreams aren't real. There was no second chance. There was only his Zelda lying motionless in a bed back in the real world. Still, he could enjoy a moment with her here. It was rare that his dreams of her were so peaceful.

"No," he said easily. And as he looked down at her, he almost felt like he was really looking at her. There was something about her that didn't have that dream-like quality that usually accompanied the times he'd see her at night. And gods, she was glowing in the firelight, casting shadows across her features that made his hand itch to trace the outline. He was about to tell her how beautiful she is, though his brain ran through several more playful variations of the phrase, when he saw her smile, like she could see the wheels turning in his brain. Like she does in real life.

It had him laughing before he found himself unable to do anything but bend down and tease her, bringing his lips dangerously close to hers before veering off towards her ear. "Any life with you in it can't be half bad." He brought his lips down to brush lightly against hers before pulling back, satisfied with the way she arched up to try and chase his almost-kiss.

But her expression changed to one that was far more serious, and tears began to fill her eyes. "I finally have them back."

He nodded. Looking around the room, it was almost like their two brains were sharing a space. He knew that she was in a world where her parents and sister existed. Her dreams had always taken her back there, where she always longed to be. He knew her deepest desires, and foremost of them was that she could be with her family again.

"I know," he said, brushing her hair out of the way. He needed to feel her skin, and it felt real as his fingers traced down her cheekbone and jaw. "I love you. Whatever you choose, I'll understand, even if it's not me. I just need you to be happy."

His eyes shot open as he sucked in a deep breath and leaned over her body. Running his hands across his face and through his hair, he considered going back to his room, if only to try to avoid more haunted dreams. But instead, he found his head dropping right back down onto her mattress as he groaned.

"Gods, please just wake up, Zelda."

He felt a light breeze tickle his ear, like the whisper of the Goddess herself.

But that didn't make sense.

His head shot up, eyes alert and on the door before he realized what was happening.

Zelda's fingers were brushing against his ear as her hand stretched out toward him. Her eyes were slits, but they were open, staring at him, unblinking.

His mouth dropped open, his hand moving to cover it as he stared back at her. He wasn't sure if he was dreaming, or if what he was seeing was real.

She winced in pain, and Link's hand shot out towards her, though never managing to find somewhere to land, still too dumbstruck to say a word or consciously react to her.

She could tell.

Her mouth began forming small shapes before managing to whisper two words: "I stayed."