Here's one for the collection! Just some good ole angst for the soul! This takes place somewhere between chapter 19 and 20!
Navy flags snapped atop their poles, the glass of the windows shaking against the iron grates, and the rain pelted against the shingles of the roof: an unsteady rhythm that harmonized with the crackle of the firewood. It was the kind of night that left the queen reluctant to return home to her empty chambers.
But soon, her chambers wouldn't be so empty anymore. She often wondered what that would feel like having him to come home to, to have his things mesh with hers, to crawl into bed beside him and see him dressed less than proper. Her face heated at the thought.
A long while had passed before he came to her study door, a knock so familiar under the weight of his hand so much that she knew it was him. At her clearance, Link entered with sodden hair and a fresh set of clothes, but his boots were crusted with mud and flaking on the carpets. Training had surely left him amess after such a storm.
Unlike at his homestead in Ordon, knights didn't get to stay in on a rainy day. Instead, they were to push twice as hard on the slick grounds and through the misty air. Needless to say, the knights were pushed to their limits and as second-in-command, Link was no exception.
"You look exhausted. You don't want to turn in early?" She said this though she selfishly wished he wouldn't; she hadn't seen him all day.
"Nah," he replied, though the tired undertone of his voice betrayed him. He'd had many worse days, of course, scouring through unforgiving temples and facing ruthless beasts. But a hard day was still a hard day, and even heroes were exhausted from time to time.
But now he had Zelda to return to, and after a nice hot bath, he was just glad to be back in her company. She was perched on the sofa before the fire, with her frayed blanket wrapped around her shoulders and a poetry book open in her palms. Her pale blue eyes were more radiant than the firelight, her small smile warmer than its heat.
The sofa shifted as he slumped into it and the fragrance from his bath oils filled the air. She set the small book aside and lifted the old blanket a touch higher. "Are you cold?"
His face stilted with a fluster before a smile tugged at his lips and he carefully scooted closer. Warmth washed through him instantly, but it wasn't from the blanket. Rather, it was the steady pressure of her shoulder and the accidental brush of her thigh against his. He often wondered what she thought in a tender moment like this. Did it fluster her too?
Zelda turned her gaze back to the fire; though they were solemn, her eyes sparkled in the flitting flames, and her dark hair spilled over her shoulders, soft and dark in the shadows but gleaming like melted gold in the firelight.
His fingers found the frayed edges of the blanket and fixed it over his other shoulder. "Where'd you get this blanket?"
Zelda tensed. It didn't seem like much of a question in his head, but when he said it out loud, it fell heavy on the room like he'd dropped a brick in a still pond.
They were weeks away from marriage now. But still, there was much about each other that they didn't know: her status as queen had urged them to marry sooner, after all. It wasn't typically a problem: it was nice actually, during quiet evenings like these that they could fill with conversation.
But his question felt heavy in a way he hadn't prepared for and so he quickly threw more words out if it'd ease the tension. "It seems like your favorite. Is it your baby blanket?"
She opened her mouth but nothing came from it. Instead, her pale eyes glazed over, going distant to a place he couldn't follow. It took a moment for her to say, "No." There was another pause, long and drawn out, where he thought she might leave it there. But instead she said, "It's from the tower."
His mouth fell open then, the word "Oh," slipping out without him really meaning to say it. It was a sensitive topic, and he'd never intentionally broached it. He'd seen the scars that riddled her body, fading into the smoothness of her skin; he'd heard her voice quiver with an uncharacteristic vulnerability when she spoke of it. "I'm sor-"
"It's okay," she interjected, clearly anticipating the apology. "It's fine."
But it wasn't. Her fear still festered. It was in the screech of an iron door and the thud of heavy footsteps and the menacing torchlight pouring through a door or the raise of a hand or a voice. It was in the fall of twilight, when darkness dampened her contentment like a snuffer smothering a candle, and all she had was her blanket to shelter in.
Some irrational part of her was ashamed: thinking how foolish it was for the bearer of wisdom to be afraid of something that's done and gone, or how inelegant of a queen to be cowering under her blanket at any unexpected noise. But until recently, she'd had the fortune of not disclosing it to anyone, of being alone at the worst of it, in the privacy of her bedchambers.
Whether Link understood why or not, he'd already seen her flinch in the morning upon awakening in the desert. He'd learned that she'd suffered at the guard's hands in the tower – and at times, she was certain he was just as fragile at the fall of night. She could share this with him.
"It's just…one of the few things that brought me comfort. I couldn't bear parting with it. When the time came to reconstruct the tower, I took it with me."
Link's hand fell on hers, sending that familiar trill of the Triforce rolling up her arm, and she suddenly realized she'd been tugging at a loose thread. "I get that," he said; his voice had been so absent from the room that it almost startled her. But it brought her comfort instead. "I kept everything I found too."
A skittish smile tugged at her lips. "You do have quite a bit of treasures." When they worked out the logistics of it, he admitted he didn't have much to bring when he'd move into her chambers. But he had a rather large trunk of odds and ends that he couldn't seem to part with, one that started to gather dust in the back of his own closet.
He smiled sheepishly. "What else brought you comfort?"
She paused, giving his question a fair deal of thought before answering, "You," she said. "And Midna of course. Knowing you were both defending this kingdom gave me a great deal of comfort. More than anything, for that matter."
Guiltily, her words made his heart skip a beat. He never wanted her to suffer or feel as alone and helpless as she had, and it pained him to think that she'd been abused all along – that he'd never considered it - that he hadn't done anything about it. They'd left her in the tower, thinking foolishly that she was safe there - as a princess ought to be - and carried on, while she stayed back and anticipated the inevitable abuse from the guard only steps away from her door.
And yet there was a strange consolation in knowing that Zelda thought of him – that thinking of him comforted her, even at the darkest of times. She'd relied on them to save the kingdom and at least in that he hadn't failed her.
Looking down at their joined hands, he brushed her knuckles idly. "I thought about you too…" he admitted. "Me and Midna would talk about you a lot."
"You did?"
"Yeah. Sometimes, she'd bring you up out of nowhere, but other times it was like she knew you were on my mind…" He shook his head, eyes fallen downcast, and when the fluster rekindled on his cheeks, he rose his bare hand to idly scratch it. "But I always worried about you. I just wish -"
She stopped him suddenly with a soft but firm kiss on his cheek. His hand froze against his face, eyes wide and staring blankly at the tapestry over her shoulder. Her lips lingered against his red hot skin; her breath filtered through her lips and carried to the hollow of his ear. "Wish nothing. You saved me."
Her words sent his hand moving on its own accord, before he even realized that he'd broken free of his stupor, and thread into her hair, grasping her head and drawing her into an embrace. His face buried into her shoulder, catching the warm familiarity of her smell and holding it into his throat like it was something tangible.
"You're safe now," he agreed, his voice hitched with his breath, but she'd shuddered in his arms as he said it. It was a reminder – half-spoken to himself – a vow abridged to the ones they'd speak at the altar only weeks later.
When she regained some strength, she drew back far enough to find his eyes, alight with firelight - and maybe also his assertion, and said, "I know."