Prompt No.12
Word count: ~650
Universe: Breath of the Wild
Pairings: Zelink
Rating: T
Themes: Drowning, needles, disorientation, near-death experiences
"Don't Move"
He remembered the blinding pulse of holy light, and the darkness following close on its heels, and the look on her face when she gathered him into her arms. He remembered the hopeless, broken promise she had made. He remembered, vaguely, the dark encroaching around them both as his consciousness trickled away.
Then he felt his lungs pushed open, forcibly inflated, and the haggard breath he drew was so painful his spine arched off the stone slab at his back. Everything glowed, prismed in soft blue haloes of light, and water lapped at his body. He flailed, reaching blindly for an anchor, and Zelda appeared above him, tears streaming down her face.
"Don't move," she urged him, taking his face in her hands, and soothingly brushed his bangs away. "You're going to be all right. The Shrine is—"
His lungs were forced open again, dragging a harsh breath of cool, moist air and pulling wounds apart, and he groaned, writhing.
"You'll be all right," she wept, her eyes not leaving his even as voices murmured behind her, and she nodded once. "You won't remember this," she promised. "Just don't move."
The water sloshed as the pool flooded deeper, rising over his limbs, submerging his ears and blotting out the sounds and the voices of that strange cavern. Only leaving her.
He couldn't hear her anymore. But he could read the words on her lips, mouthed like a prayer, as she held his face. Don't move.
The liquid rose higher, covering his ribs, and he tilted his head back desperately, trying to keep his mouth clear. He choked out her name as the water lapped over his lips. And then he clenched his teeth, sputtering, floundering, as his lungs were forced open again.
He thrashed, limbs flailing and water spraying in all directions as he fought to breach the surface, as every instinct in his body screamed that he was seconds from drowning. His heart jack-knifed in his chest and his head spun. The water sloshed everywhere, and Zelda was so hard to see through the tumult on the surface.
Then the burn was too much, and he had to obey.
He gasped a lungful of water, which he quickly realized wasn't water at all. It ached like inhaling water would, but when he exhaled and dragged of it again against his will, taking the odd stretch of it into his chest, he stopped fighting it.
Her hands were still on his face, coaxing him through the process, gently brushing at his rippling hair, at his jaw. Soothing him while he drowned.
Soon the water was still enough that he could make her out through the surface, glowing in the radiant blue emanating from his pool. Her fingertips stroked along his forehead as his body twitched reflexively again with another drag of liquid into his lungs.
Don't move, she was whispering again, those pristine, otherworldly green eyes of hers harnessing his, lulling him into senseless obedience.
He let his whole body go limp, lolling when the Shrine forced his lungs open again, letting his eyes roll back as the machine took its readings and began its work, holding perfectly still when her hands finally pulled away and something heavy and unyielding forced his head down to the slab. The cavern went dark as he was sealed inside, and he whimpered quietly at the loss of her touch—at the loss of the one thing that had made dying a second time remotely bearable.
Then, burning like a streak of white light, he felt the pain of a dozen searing needles perforating his spine like hot knives into butter, his body twitching again on its skewers as his lungs took another involuntary drag of liquid.
You won't remember any of this.
His eyes closed softly as the numbing agents did their work, dragging him under and keeping him there for 100 years.
Just don't move.