Prompt No.3
Word count: ~1490
Universe: Ocarina of Time
Pairings: Zelink
Rating: T for some blood
Themes: Fever, delirium, infected wounds, shrapnel, foreign body removal

Delirium

The fever had already begun to take him by the time he made his way out of the temple.

Her first night tending him was little more than an adrenaline-fueled blur to her now; his condition had deteriorated so much faster than she could have imagined. When she had dived from her hiding place after she saw him slump against the cave entrance, covered in a sheen of sweat and pale as a ghost, and slung his arm over her shoulders, he had given her a crooked smirk and murmured, "You should see the other guy."

She couldn't have known that it was so much more than exhaustion compelling him to lean so gratefully onto her shoulders. She couldn't have known that he had been walking around with a festering injury for days.

If she had known…

Sheik peeled away his tunic to examine the wound again, trying to ignore the weak groan that fell from his lips when the fabric pulled at the lesion. The potions and herbs were having little effect. The jagged edges where the blade had torn through his side were still inflamed and discolored, and flapping loosely like the tattered remains of a banner on a wasted battlefield. It just wasn't healing. He needed something more.

She would have to leave him—find a fairy fountain, or maybe a merchant who had happened across a stray...

He stirred, murmuring, and she brushed his bangs away from his forehead absently.

Then his eyes opened, just barely, the ice blue of his irises cutting through the lantern light like a poe's flame.

"Sheik," he whispered hoarsely, and she laid a hand softly on his shoulder, relieved.

She wanted to collapse beside him from exhaustion and weep, tell him how happy she was he was alive, apologize for everything her bad decisions had brought upon him and everyone else—but she didn't have the luxury. She wasn't the Princess now. She was his counselor.

"It was reckless to let a wound go untreated in a place like that," she murmured.

"No potions," he slurred quietly, his eyes lolling sideways, and she pursed her lips.

"Well, you need something stronger than that now. You need a fairy."

"No fairy," he whispered, eyes rolling back into his head, and she touched his face, trying to keep him lucid.

"I know. That's why I have to go."

"Why would the Great Deku Tree want to see you?"

She blinked at him. "What?"

"Mido thinks I killed him, but I—"

He shifted, the movement pulling at his injury, and he arched away from it, his face screwing in pain. He pushed himself up against the cave wall before she could stop him, remarkably steady despite the fever, and pressed his hands into his side like they were all that was holding him together.

"Don't touch it," she scolded him, closing his hands on his wrists, and his eyes split open again.

"Sheik?" he whispered, his eyes darting around the cave as though seeing it for the first time, seeing her for the first time, and she swallowed.

"Stay with me, Link," she growled, only so her voice wouldn't wobble. "We're in the woods behind Kakariko. I need to get you a fairy—"

But then his eyes went wide, and he reached for her with a grimy, trembling hand, and touched her face. Her eyes widened, too, remembering that she had discarded her mask during her vigil the night before and had yet to replace it.

He whispered, the name spilling from his lips like a prayer, "Zelda."

For a moment she was frozen, suspended in the intensity of his stare. Then his expression flickered with discomfort, and she snatched her scarf with trembling hands, wrapping it swiftly around her nose and mouth. It would be fine. He was delirious with fever. He wouldn't remember. But the way he was looking at her…

"A fairy, Link," she repeated, not quite able to hide the tremor in her voice as she had her face. "Is there a fountain nearby?"

He slumped again, panting. "I understand why you didn't tell me. You had to protect yourself."

"Focus, Link—"

"After all," he scoffed, coughing weakly. "I abandoned you for seven years."

She sighed, closing her eyes. Did he have to seem so earnest, so lucid, when he was looking at her like that? His head lolled weakly, but his poe-fire eyes pierced right through her Sheikah armor into her soul.

She whispered, "That wasn't your fault."

"Rauru, the old one, he said I was… too young…" his head lolled again, eyes clouding beneath flickering lids. "Gods. It feels like the Crater in here."

"It's your fever," she reminded him, pressing her knuckles to his temple to gauge his temperature again, and he took her hand, sighing gently as he leaned into it.

"I didn't know where you were. I knew you had to hide yourself from him, but I still wanted…"

His eyes closed, chest rising and falling in great, staggered swells, and he was still for so long she wondered if he had slipped under again. But when she tried to take her hand back, he gave a small squeeze, and she let him hold on a while longer. When his eyes opened again, it was like staring into pools of the clearest, most tranquil water, and the peace in them took her breath away.

Then he sat up, dragged her mask off her chin with both hands, and pressed the softest kiss to the corner of her mouth.

For an instant neither of them spoke. His eyes harnessed hers with the purest, deepest fire, and even in the knowledge that he was delirious, that he was fighting a losing battle with a fever, that in all likelihood he wouldn't remember uncovering this lie in a matter of hours, she couldn't help but walk further into it, reveling in the way it burned.

Then he clapped his hand over his side and hissed, and she saw the red blooming through his tunic.

"Now you've done it," she muttered, breathless, dizzy with fear, and helped him to lie back down.

She peeled the tunic back again, trying to blot out his cries as the pain got inexplicably worse. Then she saw it, peeking out from amidst the oozing red, dislodged from its hiding place by his movement: a jagged, black piece of blade, still digging into the soft tissue of the wound.

"I'm never going to get to tell her," he groaned, tossing, and roared through his teeth when she spread the injury with nimble fingertips, exposing the shard. "Sheik, you have to… no, she would think… think I was too young… but I wasn't..."

She braced herself, trying to ignore the tiny flutterings erupting beneath her ribs with every word, and warned him, "Link, I'm going to pull this out."

She had treated broken bones and worse before, on herself and on others. She knew how to make it quick and clean, and how to numb herself to a patient's screams. So the blood cascading over her bandaged fingertips and his gasps and whimpers of pain when she grasped the corroded metal didn't bother her.

What broke her was the scream that echoed through the cavern when she steeled herself and pulled, and that the name he called out was hers.

Time was of the essence now. She pinched the wound shut as he went boneless, tears spilling from her eyes, and begged him, "Link, please. I need to get you a fairy, or you're going to die. Do you understand?"

His eyes split open tiredly, searching her face for a breathless half-second, before they closed again.

"Graveyard…" he panted. "Northwest tomb…"

In the next instant she was gone, her shadow slipping out of the cave into the cover of night.

The fairy made quick work of the injury, and of his fever. He woke the next morning, sore, but functional, and well out of danger. He smiled blearily at her as he came to, examining her familiar, obscured face in the splash of sunlight spilling into the mouth of the cave, and hesitantly prodded the bandage where the last of the damage was still healing.

"Don't touch," she growled, exhausted, and his smile widened.

"It seems I'm in your debt again," he murmured. "Thank you, Sheik."

She sighed quietly, overtired and emotionally drained, and averted her eyes. "I'd rather not make a habit of this."

"Sorry for causing you trouble. I don't remember much, which probably means it was bad."

He moved tentatively, testing the limits of his injury, and wisely decided to stay put. Then a puzzled expression crossed his face, and he tucked his elbow under his head.

"It's strange, the tricks your mind plays on you," he murmured. "I could have sworn you were…"

She waited, scarcely daring to breathe. "I was what?"

"Never mind," he said, quiet as the wind. "It was stupid of me."