Prompt No.19
Word count: ~1510
Universe: The Wind Waker
Pairings: Zelink/Tetra x Link
Themes: Punishment, torture, asphyxiation/suffocation, phantom pain
Asphyxiation
When they were children, they discovered a fallen kingdom sleeping beneath the waves. They restored Sages to lost temples, Sacred Power to an ancient sword, and reunited the fragments of a Divine Relic. She uncovered her true identity, and he sheathed his sword inside the skull of an ancient enemy, and they watched helplessly as the King of that lost kingdom let himself be swallowed by the deluge breaking from above.
The inhabitants of the Great Sea had been none the wiser. Their lives carried on, unchanging and ever monotonous. Sometimes she envied them.
Her boat swayed as she crossed out of the currents surrounding the Mother and Child Isles, drifting listlessly into the massive shadow thrown by the larger island onto the sea. She moored her craft on an outcropping, the Sheikah Stone on her neck pulsing warmly. An unfailing compass, pointing her towards her true north.
She unfurled her grappling hook and set it loose over the isle's outer ring. On the sixth throw, the hook caught. Her heart pounded as she scaled the wall, fearing what she would find on the other side. Fairies were powerful creatures, and vain to a fault. She shuddered to think what one who thought herself insulted was capable of.
She dropped into the crater. The trees and seagrass bending inward from the edges were hued with autumn colors, and the pool at its center glittered with magic. The crystalline Queen of Fairies floated above it, absently stroking her doll, and the Hero of Winds was hunched over at her feet.
Tetra swallowed, approaching cautiously. Just as her boots were about to dip into the edge of the pool she reached a barrier, crystalline as the fairy herself and hued in so many enchanted colors where she touched it.
"Welcome, Princess," the fairy said, the regal cadence of her voice at odds with her youthful appearance. She whispered into her doll's ear, and Link stirred, dragging his bone-weary face up to meet her eyes.
"You know who I am?"
The Queen Fairy laughed, a soft tinkling of little bells. "Yes, Zelda, I know who you are."
She got to her knees at the barrier's edge, pressing her hands to the invisible rim, staring through the kaleidoscope of colors blooming under her fingertips. He reached back slowly, hesitantly, mirroring her touch on the other side. She took a trembling breath. She knew the fairy would exact a price. They always exacted a price.
"You're here to take him from me?"
"Yes," she whispered, watching the faint flicker of fear cross his eyes, because there was no disguising the end of it with pretty words.
"And what would you give me," the Fairy Queen smiled, "for his freedom?"
And that was the trick, wasn't it? What could a mortal possibly offer to such a powerful being? She leaned closer, wishing she could push through; wishing she could press her lips against his neck, taste the salt and wind that was unmistakably him, and whisper reassurance in his ear the way the fairy whispered to her figurine.
"What do you want?" she dared ask.
The fairy hummed thoughtfully, and then ripped one of the arms off her fairy doll. Link's head snapped back and then fell forward, an awful gasp tearing out of him as his back curved, favoring the arch of his ribs where just such an extra limb would have attached.
"Nothing," she said simply. "I have what I want right here."
Tetra's heart leapt into her throat, feeling after the barrier frantically, thoughtlessly, as though she might find a way through. She pounded her fists on it, and the colors bloomed and rippled like shockwaves on the surface of a still pond. He looked up, panting, tipping his head against the prism wall, and his eyes, so tired, so familiar, met hers gently, whispering words she didn't need a Sheikah Stone to hear.
That's just like you. Letting your temper get the better of you.
"Let him go," she whispered miserably. "Please. I'll give you anything."
"What could you possibly offer me?" she scoffed. "Your life? Your firstborn? Your wasted kingdom, sitting at the bottom of the ocean?"
Then she took the doll in both hands and ripped it asunder unevenly down its seam, and Link's body yanked and twisted and lurched horribly as he tried to scream. He ended up on his knees, back arched and head bent back to stare up her, and she held him there with a single, bright thread between her fingers, disappearing where it would have connected to his forehead.
"He doesn't belong to you," the fairy said softly, watching him writhe and shudder where she held him taut. "He belongs to Hyrule. But he doesn't know that. I can see it in his eyes. He dreams of escape. Of you. And I'll keep him here until he understands the truth."
Winds tore suddenly through the prism, circling him violently, and the fairy let him go. He slammed one hand, palm open, against the wall separating them, trying to touch her. Trying to reach for her. His other hand was clawing at his throat as the air sucked out of his mouth, out of his chamber, pulled skyward by the cyclone. His eyes started to roll into his head, and then fluttered shut, and panicked tears finally spilled from her eyes.
"He can't breathe," she cried, casting her gaze hopelessly to the Fairy Queen. "He can't breathe!"
Her innocent features finally changed, glistening eyes narrowing and porcelain mouth turning down.
"He's the Hero of Winds," she sneered. "Surely they'll spare him."
"Why?" she wept, watching him gasp for nothing, watching his face turn listless. "Why are you doing this?"
"He abandoned us," she said ardently, like it was the simplest thing in the world and Tetra was a fool for not seeing it herself. "He would have turned his back on us and never returned. Left us here to rot while he served a new Hyrule."
"That wasn't his fault! It was mine!"
The fairy tilted her head, light catching on the glassy film of her hair.
"I took him away," she managed through her tears. "I took him to find the next Hyrule. He would have stayed here, with his family, but I took him because I thought…"
The Fairy's eyes widened horribly, and in one foul snap the wind abated and the prism shattered, rainbow-colored pieces scattering in all directions away from the pool, and Link collapsed, gasping. Tetra drew her cutlass, stepping forward. It was just a reflex, really; she knew a mere pirate's sword was useless against the Queen of the Fairies.
The fairy's head tilted farther, too far, so far her crystalline neck looked like it might snap. "Because you thought…?"
The cutlass trembled in her hand. She could hardly bring herself to admit it out loud. Then her fingers spasmed open and she dropped it, her tiny, pathetic war forgotten, and went to her knees, supporting Link as he struggled onto his arms, and gathered him up, pulling his face into her neck.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, pressing her face into his hair. "I thought it would be better for everyone. I thought we could start over."
"And Valoo, Jabun, the Deku Tree, and I? The Great Spirits? What would become of us?"
She buried her face deeper into him, and he pulled her closer. Because he knew.
"I thought it would be better for me," she whispered, and his hold tightened. "I didn't want to be a princess. I wanted to forget. I wanted to be a pirate and answer to no one. Be responsible for no one."
"You can't escape destiny," the Fairy Queen murmured. "One wish cannot undo the war that burns at the heart of Hyrule itself. The King should have known that."
Then the fairy went limp, her head and limbs falling listlessly, and suddenly she was the marionette. Something far more brilliant, all water and petals and wind, terrible and beautiful at once, rose up out of the pool, tugging her strings.
"Selfish," the fairy doll hissed, head and limbs swaying and bobbing as she turned, and suddenly Zelda could feel it, every snap and tug of string tingling over her whole body, and she went rigid.
Link felt it. He worked himself upright, still panting, and took her face in his hands.
"Tetra?"
"Don't feed into her delusions," the Fairy Queen scoffed, her voice all water and petals and wind as the doll twirled and twirled. "That's not who she is."
She pinched her eyes shut, dizzy, her pupils blowing out as her vision blurred with the sight from another set of eyes. Then the Queen of the Fairies held her doll close, gently closing her hand over its mouth, and Zelda shook, terrified, tears spilling faster out of her eyes, as her throat closed. Link's grip tightened, trying to pull her out of it, trying to find her eyes.
"Tetra!"
"Her name is Zelda," the fairy whispered. "She'll remember that soon enough."