CRUSHED FLOWERS
Every night, when Link lays down to sleep, his dreams are full of the past.
Sometimes, it's his past – a past he can fit within the memories he's recovered. There are still so many black gaps, so many memories that are lost forever – the only thing he can remember of his father is his hands, his beard, the breadth of his chest, the colors he wore as a royal guard. He barely remembers his mother. Still, things filter through: rooms he's never seen before, a horse between his legs, the silhouette of Hyrule Castle against the dawn, feast days in gold and violet and white. The blue of the sky, the taste of blood and dirt in his mouth. Feelings come back to him, too – mostly the despair of loss, underlaid with a rage that leaves him waking with fists clenched.
He knows those memories, those feelings belong to him. They are him, as much him as the calluses on his palm, as the scars that crisscross his chest. And then there are…other memories.
A sea, dark as wine. lit by thunder, and a boat underneath him, tossed like a toy upon its waves. Shadows moved through the water. And he is small in this memory, so small, and afraid. He dreams of this the least, of volcanoes spouting ice as well as fire, of a garden beneath the waves, of a tower that rises and groans from the sea like an island.
Others, that flit beneath his eyelids. A sword, bloody, raised high above his head; three jewels that spin on their own, sparkling in the sunlight that fills an empty church. A thousand different monsters, all ugly and horrible. Fire. A tree and a forest. A different sword, a sword that is both like and unlike the one on his back. Clouds beneath his feet, around him, above him. And always, always, always a girl, looking back, smiling, crying, screaming, bleeding.
Zelda. He is learning how to live with the thought of her, with her voice in his head. He remembers her the most. She blazes in his head, a lighthouse – a princess, something he can't touch, something he wanted. Something he's never had, not in any of the memories, always just out of reach, always carefully poised, always forbidden. If these are other lives he dreams of, this – the life he lives now, the life he lived before his sleep – is the closest he's ever come to her.
The dreams of a muddy field – the dreams of his life, of the end, of the Guardian's blue-red gaze and of her yelling, of the sword slipping from his grasp – leave him shaking. He wakes up sweaty, his blankets tangled around him, a scream dying stillborn in his throat.
It is…unpleasant, to feel the burden of a hundred lives, a hundred legacies, a hundred people who are and aren't him pressing down on him. He tries not to sleep. Most nights he nods off by a fire, after hours of sharpening his blade, polishing his shoes, pouring over the Sheikah Slate. Link is always exhausted. Always wet and cold and sore.
And yet sometimes the dreams are pleasant, and these are the dreams he knows are just dreams: the green rolling hills of the plateau, the flowers of spring budding on the hills, and Zelda, turning to look at him with the sunlight crowning her. She laughs, and says something, and he replies, and she is warm and real and alive and there with him.
Sometimes when he wakes up he imagines she dreamt the same thing, in that dark castle, that she derived some comfort in the idea of it being over, of just living – but he doesn't know. He doesn't know her, doesn't know what she thinks; all he knows is the fragments he's collected, the only real memories he has – but she's the only thing that matters, really. Her and defeating Ganon and saving Hyrule. In all his dreams, he knows that's the truth, that that's his purpose.
And there will be time to live later, when that is done, when he is himself, when he can sleep without dreaming.