Prompt No.10
Word count: ~995
Universe: Legend of Zelda
Pairings: Zelink
Rating: T
Themes: Imprisonment, torture, beatings, whipping, fainting

Unconscious

Unconsciousness, he was beginning to think, was a very good thing.

At first it startled him. The darkness when he slipped under. The disorientation when he woke again. The disconnect of knowing a chunk of your life was missing. But there were some things that weren't worth remembering.

He held his middle with a groan and leaned closer to the wall, using it like a shield to keep the blows from half his body. One of them kicked him again where one of his ribs had already cracked, and his vision danced white and starlit, blinding him with a different sort of momentary unconsciousness, the sort that he could feel all over.

But he couldn't bring himself to fight back. These were Hyrule's soldiers. He had sworn his life the same as they had. Even now, when Hyrule had turned on him, it felt like a sin to retaliate against those he would have given his life for not a week ago.

"He's had enough," one of them barked, which he knew from experience wasn't exactly a call to cease.

They yanked him off the wall by his hair, and something less yielding than fists or boots bludgeoned him across the head, and with a quick twist of his neck the floor turned dark again.

The unconsciousness was nice. It was quiet. I didn't hurt, until he woke up. It passed the time, which went by gruelingly slowly the rest of the time.

When he woke he was hanging from his wrists, brought jarringly back to consciousness by a frigid splash of water to the face, and hardly before he had time to orient himself the wildfire of the whip came down on his bare shoulders with a crack. The cry he loosed was as startled as it was pained, and as he dragged his face back to the whipping post to brace himself for the next, he saw a glimmer of regret in the eyes of the young soldier with the water bucket. Because they knew who he was. They knew what he had done. And sometimes the punishment did seem a bit unbalanced, given all he had already sacrificed.

The whip came down again, and his cry rumbled in his throat, and the young soldier flinched again.

"If you had known your place," his tormentor reminded him—a much more seasoned soldier, one who had seen enough horrors to numb himself to the ones he was incurring now—and brought the whip down again, "you could have spared yourself this."

Of course he knew that.

He only wondered if any of them would have been stronger in his place.

The whip came down again, and again, and again, melting his back to ribbons, and he clawed uselessly at the post. He had lost count, so he wasn't precisely sure how far away the darkness was, but he could feel it coming again. Between the broken bones around his lungs, the weight on his wrists, and the burn on his back, it didn't feel very far at all.

And then the whip came down again and he was gone.

The next time he woke must have been close to midnight.

The sparse light entering his cell and the quiet outside betrayed the sleepiness of the guards and the world outside. He groaned quietly as the fire on his back began to light again in tandem with his consciousness. Then a cool touch brushed the bangs away from his forehead, and the dazzling, blinding white of before struck him in another way entirely.

He grabbed at the cell bars, panting through the pain as he pulled himself to his knees and got closer to the silhouette on the other side. Her hands—so soft and perfect and soothing in that place that was burning him alive—cupped his face as he pressed it into the bars.

He trembled, "Zelda. How did you—?"

"The night warden," she whispered, leaning close to leave a tentative, delicate kiss to the corner of his mouth, where he seemed the least damaged.

Yes, he had known the night warden. They tortured him because Hyrule demanded it, not because they were heartless. He couldn't say he wouldn't have done the same, in their position.

"Then I owe him," he said, managing a breathless smile, but his Princess's brow puckered.

"This is all my fault," she whispered, tears spilling from her eyes, but he scoffed at her.

"I knew what I was getting myself into."

She pressed closer, and he mirrored her, touching through the bars where they could, forehead to forehead, fingertips to fingertips, hesitantly, fearfully, breathlessly, mouth to mouth.

"He lets me in every night," she whispered again, as close to his ear as she could manage with the iron between them. "I stay as long as I can. Until I'm afraid I'll be missed."

"Every night?" She nodded, and his face fell. "When do you sleep?"

She laughed a sad, bubbling laugh, and kissed him again. "Of course you would be worried about me, when I'm the one visiting you in the dungeons. Sometimes I sleep a little here, beside you. More than once I know I've deterred them from making your life worse by my presence alone. I can't countermand the King, but I could still make them miserable if I wanted."

He grasped rigidly at the bars, reeling, dizzy with realization, and managed, "You should have let them."

She loosed a bitter breath. "What are you saying?"

"I would rather be whipped and beaten and endure whatever other torture they pleased, with my eyes on you," he whispered fervently, reaching to stroke her face, feather-soft, with a trembling hand, "than have peace without you."

Her face crumpled again, those pretty features creasing with her tears, and they felt after each other through the bars—forehead to forehead, fingertips to fingertips, and hesitantly, fearfully, breathlessly, mouth to mouth.

Unconsciousness, he was beginning to think, was a two-edged sword.