Prompt No.17
Word count: ~770
Universe: Breath of the Wild
Pairings: Early Zelink
Rating: K
Themes: Fever

"Stay with me"

Ever since he rescued her from the blades of the Yiga, Link's relationship with the princess had changed.

She smiled at him more. She talked to him while she did her research, and even worked to coax replies out of him during supper. She didn't object when he followed her everywhere, or roll her eyes when he joined her in the stables in the morning. She let him know when she was going out instead of constantly trying to ditch him. She had started using his name.

It was nice. It was the sort of thing that made him second guess his initial reaction when he had seen the blood. It was the sort of thing that let him be talked into going on because it was just a scratch. It was the sort of thing that made him listen, after she let him bandage the wound, when she told him to stop worrying about it. It was the sort of thing that made him write it off as just a little overexertion when she was exhausted and dragging by sunset. It was the sort of thing that dulled his good sense.

By the time he realized, feeling after her throat in the middle of the night, that she was burning up with fever, he didn't have a choice but to leave everything behind and rush her back as fast as the wind could carry them.

It had been his own stupid, selfish complacence that had gotten them into this mess, and Hylia take him if he couldn't get her out of it.

He urged his horse on again, the froth on its neck and mouth slicking the reins as it pounded across Hyrule Field towards the silhouette of the castle, looming darkly in the sunrise. He held her closer when she felt him clutching at his chest, shivering in the early morning cold.

"Hold on, Zelda," he murmured into her hair. "Stay with me."

By the time they reached the causeway, his horse trembling and huffing with exertion, the princess wasn't looking much better. He carried her through the castle's labyrinth of corridors toward the physician's quarters, causing a ruckus and jarring the staff awake with their untimely arrival, and when the doctors pulled her from his arms to tend to her and ushered him back into the hallway, he felt spent and bereft.

He spent the day pacing outside the door, waiting for news, and when they finally came out near midnight and told him the fever had broken, something burning in him doused, too. And the next morning, when they roused him from where he had nodded off against the corridor wall and told him he could go inside, he felt stronger than he had felt in two days. But one look at her as he latched the door closed behind him, and all the hunger and insomnia came crashing down again, and he didn't feel strong enough to face her.

But she had already spotted him, blinking a tired smile as he crossed the threshold.

"They told me you burst into the castle gates at dawn with me in your arms, ordering everyone around like a madman," she smirked, her eyes sparkling with laughter. "Thank you. I would like to have seen that."

He drew a chair up beside her bed quietly, not quite able to conjure a smile himself, and sat for a moment, hands threading rhythmically, before he met her eyes. "You shouldn't thank me, Princess. If I'd been doing my job you wouldn't have gotten sick in the first place."

She scoffed, waving her bandaged arm dismissively in an impressive show of exactly how little energy she had. "You tried. I wouldn't let you."

"I never let you talk me out of doing the right thing before."

"Well," she sighed, blinking another lazy smile, "you worry about jeopardizing our friendship now. I admit I've been using that to manipulate you recently."

He scowled at her, but when she laughed the disapproval dissolved away.

"I'm glad you're on the mend," he finally told her, earnestly, quietly. "I'll let you rest."

But her hand was on his before he could leave his chair, her eyes glittering with the first bit of fear and discomfort he'd seen since this whole thing started.

"Don't go," she said, so quietly, mustering the saddest, smallest smile for him. "Stay with me."

And the way she looked at him made his lungs deflate and his hands and feet warm. It was nice. It was the sort of thing that dulled his good sense.

So he stayed.