"Come on Zel, what do you say we ditch these losers and go have a little fun on or own, huh?"

"I don't know, Marth…I'm fine staying with everyone else."

Marth's laugh came out in a low rumble directly in Zelda's ear; he stood behind her and clamped his arms around her waist, his chin on her shoulder. "Come on, babe. I promise they won't miss us while they're playing Twister. You promised me some alone time for my birthday, especially since we're currently spending my birthday at Malon's beach house which, I'll remind you, I did not want to do."

"Just a few more minutes, Marth," Zelda said quietly.

"Nah, I know what you're doing, Cleverly." He snickered. "You're trying to buy some time, you want to debate with me. This is non-negotiable, sweetheart. Besides, I don't see what the problem is here. It's a win-win situation. You love me, I love you, we're happy together. Don't you want to cement our relationship?"

"Do you really love me, Marth?" Zelda whispered, feeling her resolve crumbling despite herself.

"You know I do," he said back in a low voice, kissing the tip of her ear. "Now what do you say, huh?"

She wanted to cry but at the same time felt strangely elated. "All right, let's go."

It had hurt. She thought it was going to be incredible, the most exhilarating experience of her young life up to that point. But he had been too eager, too harsh, too inconsiderate of how she might have been feeling. When she asked him to ease up a little, he shut her up by saying his last girlfriend had liked it that way. Well, Zelda figured, she didn't want to come off as a complainer. But still—it had been her first time, and only after the fact did she discover it had come far too early.

The scene dissolved…they were in the Cleverly family's basement…

"You told your mother?!" He was furious.

"Marth, what else could I do?" Zelda whispered, sitting on the couch while he paced furiously back and forth.

"Why didn't you tell one of your sisters first?!"

"You know what my mother is like, she got it out of me!" She hated having to defend herself like this against him. "Nothing goes unnoticed by her, nothing! And I can assure you that had I not said anything now, she most likely would have noticed when my stomach starting bulging out!"

"Not if we had just aborted the godforsaken thing!"

Zelda gaped at him. "How dare you even suggest that, Marth! How dare you! You know I could never do something like that! And someday, maybe not right now or next year, you'd feel excruciating guilt if we had done that!"

"I don't ever feel guilt for anything, Cleverly!" Marth spat at her, standing firmly in front of her as if to emphasize what he saw as his dominance over her. "Now all I know is that your lovely mother has given me an ultimatum, and frankly, I don't want to marry you, the sex was terrible!"

The reality and blunt honesty behind his words nearly pushed Zelda to burst into tears. It was such a low blow, but the worst part of it was that she was not even as surprised as she knew she should have been. No, scratch that—the worst part of it was that she was going to ask him for a second chance; it mortified her, yet she heard the words come spilling out of her mouth as if without her control: "Marth, please, that was my first time. I can get better."

"I've heard that one before," he sneered with a derisive laugh.

"Well was that all it was to you, anyway?" Zelda shouted, launching herself to her feet. Marth jumped slightly as this sudden move, and it gladdened her that for a brief moment she had been the one to pull the rug out from under his feet. "You were just going out with me all this time because you wanted to get me into bed, is that it? Don't you—don't you CARE about me at all?"

Marth's expression changed slowly from slight astonishment to a cold smirk. "Sure I care about you, Zellie. You're my sweetheart."

"I don't know why I bother talking to you," she hissed, turning away when he made to cup her chin.

She sat herself back down on the floor. There was a very long, unpleasant silence between them that lasted several minutes. Each was waiting for the other to speak up, but Zelda was tired of being the first to say something and decided she was going to wait for Marth to talk, no matter how long it took. It ended up taking five more minutes, but she was glad of it—glad not to be the weak, pathetic one who caved first.

"Fine," Marth said in a low, gravelly voice of defeat. He said the word like a defiant five-year-old who did not want to go to sleep at his bedtime but had been shoved into obeying by a forceful parent. "I will marry you." Zelda looked up at him as if to make sure he wasn't lying, wasn't just saying it to pacify her. His expression was difficult to read, but his tone was dark as he added, "I really pity you, Zelda Cleverly. You know that? I really pity you."

But pity soon turned into impatience, and impatience into anger. Even after Megan had been born, Marth didn't seem to care what effects his actions were having on his wife and young daughter. In fact as the years went by he spent less and less time with them, and on the rare nights he deigned Zelda worthy of his time, that time was usually spent—on his insistence—in the bedroom. In retrospect, Zelda found her willingness to go along with it horrifying. It went against everything her mother had ever taught her, against everything she had learned growing up in a society that encouraged women to stand up for themselves. But Marth had been her one weakness, the only boy she had ever really loved, and this blind devotion was more harrowing than she could ever have imagined. She did not let on to her family how badly things were going between the two of them, although she got the distinct impression that Viv, Terra, and Jack had an inkling as to what was going on.

It had happened when Vivien and Terra walked in on Zelda when she was dressing one day. She had just changed into a bathing suit and had been about to pull a bathrobe over it when the door swung open. Viv and Terra had wondered why their sister had started insisting on wearing something over a bathing suit when she went swimming, but that day they stood in the door frame in shock, their expressions identical in horror at what they saw, the looks on their faces forever etched into Zelda's memory.

"Good Goddesses, Zelda, what happened to you?!" Vivien almost yelled, taking five long strides over to her sister. She yanked the bathrobe off of Zelda, revealing a long, red scar between the young woman's shoulder blades. "That's no new scar!" Vivien snarled, intense fury in her voice at Zelda not having confided in her about whatever had happened when the scar was new. "Explain this, right now!"

"Vivien, calm down," Terra scolded, kicking the door shut and walking quickly to Zelda's side. "Honey, how did you get this? What happened to you?"

Zelda's eyes shifted from one to the other—the doctor Vivien's enraged, vengeful expression and Terra's solicitous, solemn one—before she collapsed onto a chair, waiting for tears to come. They never did; she figured she must have used them all up months ago. "I—I fell and—"

"Don't give us that crap, Zelda, you tell us what really happened," Vivien interrupted her, a hard edge to her voice that signaled she was not to be messed with (it sounded like their mother's voice)

"Zelda," Terra whispered, gently pushing some of Zelda's hair behind her ear. "Be honest. Did Marth do this to you?"

Vivien's eyes narrowed, her eyebrows knit together. Zelda's gaze moved to the ground and she emitted a low whine. "Y-yes," she whimpered with a dry sob. Vivien swore loudly, but Terra quieted her and waited for Zelda to go on. "He was just really angry, and I—I think he was drunk, but he hadn't been home for a week and—and I was just really upset when he finally got home, and h-he didn't like that I was y-yelling at him, and—and then he took that vase Jack got me for my birthday and—"

"Zelda Nayru Cleverly, are you telling me he threw that thing at you when your back was turned?" Vivien asked, her voice a dangerous whisper. Zelda nodded weakly and Viv swore again. "HOW could you not say anything about this?!"

"I didn't want for something to go wrong," Zelda said, though she felt her words sounded utterly empty as she said them. "You don't understand, I—I really love him, I wish to the Goddesses that I didn't, but I do! And he's Megan's father, I can't—"

"Holy Din, that scar by Megan's eyebrow," Vivien once more interjected. "She didn't run into a table at all, did she?" When Zelda's only response was a lengthy silence, Vivien made for the door. "That's it, he is history."

"Viv, what are you going to do?" Zelda cried, leaping out of her chair.

"Well I hate to do this, Zelda, but if you're just going to sit around and let yourself be abused, I'm saying something to mother." The threat was a good one; Zelda's eyes widened in horror and disbelief. "Don't look at me like that! Mom's sent guys to jail that have done less than Marth! The very LEAST you can ask of him is a divorce! Neglect, abuse, you could probably even throw a couple of DUI's in there. Zelda, you are stronger than this! You're better! I can't believe that you of all people would just sit here and let this happen to you and not do anything about it! If not for yourself, you could at least think of your daughter and her well-being!"

"But I love…I love him," Zelda insisted, pulling the bathrobe up around her tightly. "Viv, I can't—"

"Stop thinking of yourself, Zel, I mean it!" Vivien said so loudly that Terra stepped between her two sisters, as if worried that Viv would slap Zelda. "I have no idea in hell how you could have possibly stayed in love with this jerk after high school, but fine, that's your prerogative! You want to let him throw things at you and hit you and leave you alone all the time? Fine! Go ahead! But the idea that you'd let him do the same thing to a little girl makes me sick, it really does!"

Zelda stared at her. It was true, it was all true. Hearing it from somebody else threw the entire, sick thing into a whole new perspective. She hadn't been thinking of Megan nearly as much as she should have. Looking to Terra for some advice, Zelda said, "I really screwed up this time, didn't I?"

"Oh, honey," Terra sighed. "You have to do what's right. This is it."

"When exactly did this happen to you, anyway? That's what I want to know," Vivien said, indicating the scar on Zelda's back.

It was horrible—she could remember every tormenting detail—Marth was yelling "Don't you turn your back on me, you slut!"—something hard, heavy, and glass hit her on the back—there was a shriek of shock from the stairs; Zelda looked up from her position on the floor and saw her three-year-old daughter standing there, appearing horrified at what she was seeing; "Go back upstairs, Megan, now."—"Mommy, mommy, what'd he do to you?!"—"You heard your mother, Megan, go upstairs NOW!" Marth roared; when the girl did not immediately obey, he charged towards her—

Zelda could not remember the last time she woke up screaming; in fact, she did not believe she ever had. But tonight, tonight …it had been such a horrendous nightmare of memories that she had to wonder if she had even been screaming out loud all through it. As soon as she realized she was awake, Zelda clamped a hand over her mouth to silence the noise. She didn't work quickly enough, though: only a few moments later, Malon and Terra came rushing into the room. Malon was holding a heavy flashlight in her hand and brandishing it like a saber; Terra held one of Vivien's heavy, old soccer trophy in both of hers.

"Good Lord, Zelda, we thought you were getting attacked!" Malon hissed, walking over to Zelda's bed and sitting herself down at the end of it. "What on earth just happened, here?"

"What time is it?" Zelda moaned.

"It's only 9:30," Terra answered.

"What am I doing in bed?"

"You said you were tired, remember?" Malon replied. "Don't worry, we were the only ones in the hall who heard you, so… go on, dish. What just happened?"

"Nothing. Just a bad dream."

Six rooms down the hall, Link was putting Megan to bed. "Link, I'm afraid that I'm going to have bad dreams," she whispered as Link pulled the covers over her. "I always do when I'm staying at someone else's house."

"That's a silly idea," Link chuckled. "You didn't have any bad dreams last night, did you?"

"Yes."

"Oh. What was it about, do you want to talk about it?"

Megan sat up a little in her bed, looking apprehensive. She nervously started to finger one of her braids, and then spoke with a reverence that Link had never heard her—let alone a six-year-old—use before. "Link, I'm gonna tell you something, but I want you to keep it a secret. You can't tell anybody."

Supposing that she was just embarrassed about what she was scared of, Link laughed and said, "All right, I promise."

With continued seriousness, Megan said, "I know why my mom and dad aren't married anymore. Mom doesn't think I remember." Her voice remained low and quiet, as if she was afraid that anyone might be listening in at the door or (the second story) window. Link's jovial attitude evaporated immediately, and it was with the utmost gravity that he listened to Megan's explanation. "I figured out after a while that mom didn't want me to ask her about why they got divorced. So I stopped, but then one day I just remembered all of a sudden what it was. I was really little, like two or three …I know, that's weird, I don't know how I could remember anything from when I was so young, and maybe I really don't, I… I just can remember seeing dad and he threw something at mom and she fell down, I think it was one of those glass things you put flowers in, and… then they both saw me, and dad, when I wouldn't leave mom, he hit me." Her voice had a strange, detached quality to it, as if she had run the story through her mind so many times that it didn't have an effect on her.

Needless to say, the same thing could not be said of Link. "Your father hit you?" he whispered, utter disbelief coursing through his body. "And he threw stuff at your mother?" Everyone from Jack to Malon had told Link what a jerk Marth was, but he had never imagined that the man could have been that cruel. It made sense now, though. Why Zelda was so hard, why she was afraid to trust people. It explained why she felt so awkward around Megan, maybe feeling responsible for the scar that was so visible by her daughter's eyebrow. It was a physical, daily reminder of the worst choice she had ever made—staying married to that man.

Link got up off the foot of Megan's bed and headed for the door. "You're not going to tell anyone, are you, Link?" she called plaintively after him.

"No," he said, though he knew that probably wouldn't end up being true. "Now good-night, Megan." He turned around to shut the door, then glimpsed outside the window. A smile half-heartedly found its way onto his face. "Look outside, Megs. It's started to snow."

That did exactly what Link had hoped it would do; Megan was so distracted and excited by this idea that she whipped around immediately to see out of the window. "Oh my gosh!! I can't believe it! It's snow! Link, can I go play in it now, please??"

"Tomorrow, Megs," he answered. "Just think how much more fun that'll be, anyway. A lot more of it will have fallen. Good night." He heard Megan reflect the farewell and as he slowly shut the door, found himself glad that she could now fall asleep to the idea of snow rather than the recollection of her abusive father…

"Hey, Link, putting Megan to bed?" asked Malon, meeting him in the hall.

"Yes," he said shortly. "Do you know where Ms. Cleverly is?"

"Zel? Yeah, she just went outside," Malon said warily. "Now that everyone's come in, you know. But she saw the snow and grabbed this ragged old jacket she's got and so now she's sitting in the backyard." Her eyes narrowed. "Why? If you're looking for a heart-to-heart, this really isn't a good time."

"There never will be a good time for what I need to discuss with her," Link said, and he passed a confused Malon without another word. Jack and Vivien invited him to join them in the living room, but he waved them off; he entered the kitchen and Terra tried to waylay him with a fresh batch of cookies she had made, but Link ignored her and walked straight out the screen door and into the backyard. There, just as Malon had said, was Zelda. She was sitting in a lawn chair, practically in the dark as Vivien had just turned off the porch light. Snow fell around and on her, but she didn't seem to care as she stared unblinkingly up at the sky.

Although she was caught off guard when Link suddenly appeared beside her, she did not betray it at all. "Hello," she said quietly.

Link pulled a stool out from under the porch table and placed it next to his boss. He sat down and said, "I just had an interesting talk with your daughter."

"Oh, yes?"

"Yes." No beating around the bush. It didn't occur to him that maybe Zelda did not want to talk about this, especially with an employee, but he didn't care. He was so infuriated with this man she had been married to and needed to find out if what Megan had alleged was true. "She informed me precisely why you and your husband are no longer together."

To his surprise, Zelda chuckled softly. "Okay, which was it this time? Megan likes to tell herself things to justify our divorce. One time she imagined he left me for Britney Spears. Another time he got so allergic to our dog that he just couldn't stay in the house anymore. Which was it, Link, Britney or the Doberman? Or was there some new slant to it this time? I really should start keeping a journal of all her ideas, some of them really are quite creative."

"If she made this one up, her imagination is a bit darker than I thought," Link said, now watching Zelda for a reaction. "She said he hit her. And he threw a glass vase at you." Each syllable was said slowly and deliberately, and the effect worked.

Zelda turned her head to look at him, her expression simultaneously conveying shock and paramount grief. For several long moments, Zelda stared Link in the face, as if hoping he would deny what he had just said. No such luck. "She knows?" Zelda whispered, the agony in her voice matching the look on her face. "She knew this whole time what happened?"

"Don't know how, but she did."

"No…I tried so hard to keep her from that, so she'd never have to know." She put her face in her hands, her breathing suddenly coming out shallow and ragged.

"Zelda."

She looked back at him. It was the first time she had ever heard him call her by her first name. It sounded so beautiful with his voice, so reassuring and kind. Maybe it was just because he had whispered it, and those were words one usually associated with a whisper… but no; Marth had spoken her name that quietly to her before, and there was nothing in his tone but lust and darkness. As much as this meant to her, Link didn't seem to have noticed how informal he had suddenly become and he plowed right on.

"I'm…so sorry," he said. "That sounds really lame and it doesn't sum up what I'd really like to express here, but it's all I can say. But it makes my blood boil to think that a man could do something so—so evil to a woman like you and to a child."

"How do you mean that?" Zelda asked him. Link was looking down at the snowy ground, and even though he didn't glance up, Zelda knew she had to elaborate. "How do you mean, a woman like me?"

Link sighed heavily, folding his arms against the cold. "Never mind, I don't want to offend you, Ms. Cleverly. Whatever I have to say might insult you, and I don't want to lose my job over a comment and I don't want to hurt you, Ms. Cleverly."

"Link, you can't hurt me anymore than anyone else has. And please, just call me Zelda." Her voice was so incredibly gentle, she was pleading with him, and it was a side of her he had never heard before. "Tell me what you meant, be as frank as you want. I'm tired of people twisting their words and never getting around to what it really is they mean to say. Please."

"All right. From what I gather, you…" He remembered his conversation with Jack the previous evening, and various stories that Malon had told him. "You are fragile. You're fragile, and for a long time you wanted only to please other people. Your mother, and then this guy you married."

"Oh…" She figured Malon must have told him a lot about Clarissa, and she had probably been assisted by all of Zelda's siblings at this family get-together in further illustrating Zelda's less-than-stellar childhood. She suddenly felt very warm, and noticed that Link—whose light sweater was hardly appropriate for the cold, snowy weather outside—was now shivering violently. Without thinking twice she shrugged off the jacket she had been wearing, the stranger's jacket that she'd kept for six years to comfort her. "Here, take this."

"What? I'm fine."

"You're freezing."

"So are you."

"I am not, I'm fine." As if to prove this, Zelda leaned over and touched Link's cheek with her fingers. His skin was icy cold, where hers (he had to admit) were noticeably less so. She tossed the jacket at him and he reluctantly put it on.

"Say," he chuckled as he got the feel for the thing. "I think I used to have a jacket just like this." He peered at the lining and actually let out a laugh—the most beautiful sound Zelda had heard in a long while. "Hey, red plaid! I did have a jacket just like this one." He put his hands in the pockets as he had no gloves, and felt a small slip of paper in one of them. Curiously and without remembering that it was in fact that jacket of someone else (or so he thought), Link pulled the paper out and peered at it closely.

"Oh, goodness, is that garbage in there?" Zelda asked, now starting to get cold without the jacket. She didn't want to rescind her offer, though, so she put on a convincing act of not being cold in the snow at all. As Link brought the tiny paper closer to his eyes, she apologized, "I haven't even looked in the pockets of those things for years, I'm sorry."

"It looks like a ticket stub," Link said shortly. "Can you make out what it says?"

She didn't need to look, so she didn't take the stub when he tried to hand it to her. "Little Women, 1994. That's actually the jacket of the guy that I…"

All at once, it hit her. Link was staring at her, and after a few moments the same realization had struck Zelda. Her head whipped over to look at him, and their eyes met, tacitly conveying the message that was going through both of their minds at the same exact time. One night, six years ago, when two lonely strangers had sat through a depressing period piece together—escaping, as it was, from their own miserable lives for two hours before going back into their separate worlds.

"No," Zelda whispered. "You? Link?"

"Zelda!" he gasped quietly. How could he have possibly forgotten? To be fair, he had tried not to think of that night for the last six years, of the solemn beauty he had met and talked with for so long. It was incredible that after having spent so much time in the home of Zelda Cleverly, he had been unable to place her. She still had those beautiful, sorrowful, lavender eyes; a face that altogether looked as if it had been sculpted by a sad angel, how—how could he not have placed her?! And now, all he could think to ask wasn't even directly related to that. "Zelda, that guy. That punk with the blue hair, the one who passed out drunk—is he—?"

"Yes," she answered, utterly ashamed that the sweet and kind boy who had helped her escape her troubles had now met up with her again and knew some of the most awful things about her. "Sometimes I would …I'd think about that night and wish that no one had ever brought Marth home. Remember how we just left him there, and you said people always passed out at that theater, Marth was no special case?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah. Oh… Link…" She couldn't place the last time she had cried, but tears were now trickling slowly down her cheeks. "Link, you don't know, you have no idea how much the memory of… that night sustained me all these years. Whenever I felt alone or afraid, I'd just pull out your old jacket, and I'd put it on. Sometimes, I'd even …I'd even sleep in it." That last part was a little embarrassing to admit, but Zelda figured that there were no secrets anymore.

"I tried to forget it," Link said. "I didn't want to remember how dismayed I was when I found out you were with that guy, and you'd be leaving soon." He laughed, and it was an odd, mirthless noise. "You were something else, Zelda. Still are."

Tears were coming freely now, and they kept Zelda from speaking. She tried to remain silent, but soon a little sob come out of her throat; Link quickly looked back at her, and saw her hand once again reaching up to her mouth to shut herself up; a gag reflex. Link reached out and took Zelda's wrist, carefully guiding her hand away from her lips. "It's okay, Zel, it's okay," he said quietly. "A Cleverly can cry if she wants to."

That was all it took, someone else's approval. Zelda drew her legs up to her chest on the chair, and an unapologetic wail escaped her throat. She couldn't believe that after all these months, the man who had been so patient with her, so kind and understanding, so perfectly wonderful had been the same one to give her the only happy night of her entire life. This was not to mention the world of good he had done her daughter. How could she have waited so long to even think about it? Malon, Vivien, Terra, they were all right—she should have let down the walls when she was around him, the walls that carefully guarded her every trait.

The chair was roomy, and after a few moments' hesitation, Link moved up off of the stool and onto the chair next to Zelda. His arms fell into place around her shoulders, gently pulling her closer to him. Grateful initially for the warmth that his closeness brought about, Zelda buried her tear-streaked face into the familiar, comforting fabric of his jacket. The jacket on its original owner. Her legs were still drawn up, her arms shoved together to fight off the cold. Yesterday she never would have dreamed of crying in the presence of Link, her child's nanny, let alone into his shoulder. But tonight, crying on the boy who had given her hope, even for only a few short hours, seemed the most natural thing in the world.

They stayed that way for several long minutes. Terra had opened the blinds to see what was going on, and when her jaw dropped, Malon and Vivien (who had since joined her in the kitchen) hurried over to the window. They too were shocked at what they saw, which was a view from behind of Zelda huddled into Link on the same porch chair. The three women exchanged a look that signified none of them was going to interrupt; Terra shut the blinds and they all walked away and out of the kitchen, hoping that no one else would go in and disturb whatever it was that was going on outside.

The volume and intensity of Zelda's crying had diminished slightly, but the tears were still rolling out of her eyes and she still shuddered from both the chill and the half-formed sobs. It was effortless, even natural, when Link brushed some hair out of Zelda's face and kissed her cheek. His lips caught a tear as it was on its way down Zelda's cheek; he traced its line up to her eye. Zelda shivered violently and put a hand weakly on Link's chest, giving herself a slight push away from him.

She looked at him in disbelief, unwilling to consider that he had done that on purpose. But there was a certain look in his eyes, one that she didn't even realize she was reflecting: although she had never seen it in a man's gaze, she could recognize it almost immediately for what it was. Love. He loved her. He wasn't trying to undermine her or get something from her, he wanted only to give something to her. It was a completely selfless, adoring, calming look in his eyes.

"How can you look at me that way?" she asked, her voice thick with the tears she had now managed to restrain.

"What way?" he asked back.

"Like you…" It would be childish to say out loud. Though there was such little space between them, Zelda raised one hand and gingerly placed it on Link's cheek. Their foreheads touched a few moments later, and for a few seconds this was enough to placate both of them. Skin on skin. Then Zelda moved her head ever so slightly, her lips reaching up to touch Link's.

This is what it should have been like, was the first thought that came to her mind. My first kiss, this should have been it. But soon her head had no more room for thoughts as she became more involved in and aware of what she was doing. Link was gentle, careful as he returned the kiss, slowly moving one arm down towards Zelda's waist. His only concern was that his every move be good and comfortable for her, and the incredible part was that Zelda could tell this without him saying anything. Without breaking the kiss, she shifted her position in the chair so that her arms could close around him. Each time their mouths opened for air she half-expected him to try and slip in the tongue, but this was Link, not Marth, who she was dealing with.

"I think I love you," she whispered during one such moment when their lips had separated. She kissed him again, touching his face, his back, his arms, his chest, as if memorizing every contour of his upper body. "I really think I do."

"If that's so," Link whispered, pulling himself away slightly (and allowing Zelda to catch her breath), "why are you still crying like that?"

"Because I don't understand how—how somebody as amazing as you are could possibly stand someone as awful as me," Zelda replied sadly, wiping away the tears that had resurfaced.

"Zelda, listen to me, you are far from awful," Link said, and she looked at him. "Everyone deserves love. You are no exception."

"Then…you…" It would be far too much to hope.

"I do," he said, drawing Zelda into him again. "I love you, Zelda." The sincerity of his tone convinced Zelda right away, and she all too gladly found herself kissing him once more.