I'm Here For You
A gentle, steady curtain of rain pattered down outside the little traveler's shack, providing a soft wave of soothing sounds that helped ease the ache in her pounding head. Zelda's eyes drifted listlessly across the worn timbers crossing the ceiling, light from the fire flickering across their rugged surfaces.
"How are you doing?" came the anxious voice of her knight from the door. Wearily she dragged her head sideways to look at him, soaked through. He wasn't wearing his cloak – Why would he leave it behind in this downpour? – so she could see clearly the variety of herbs and the body of a cottontail rabbit hanging from his belt. A powerful wave of nausea ricocheted through her body and she cringed, slamming her eyes shut.
"A bit better," she managed weakly. She heard the stomp of his boots as he walked inside, the creak of the door on old hinges desperately in need of oil, the soft click as it closed.
"I'll make some soup," he said gently. "Do you think you could handle that?"
She considered for a moment. It had been a few hours since the… incident. The fierce, agonizing flames that had burned through her stomach at first had receded considerably, but they were still present, lurking like a snake in a bush just out of sight, ready to strike. Or a frog. She shuddered, grimacing.
Her own voice echoed through her memory. "Well, if you won't taste it, I will!" She'd sounded so playful then, only for joviality to turn swiftly to fear and panic.
Especially when Link reacted in kind. He never panicked – not when facing off Yiga, or hordes of monsters, or great heights, or… or anything.
"Are you really that afraid of frogs?" she asked groggily, her voice thick and wavering with pain. She managed to force her eyes open in time to catch his expression, eyes wide with what was nearly dismay, with the slightest trace of amusement.
"N-no, Princess," he stammered, turning his gaze back to whatever he was working on at the shack's one little table. Considering the rabbit he'd brought in, she was glad she couldn't see. "I… didn't like what it was doing."
Her mind was fuzzy, not at all helped by the piercing headache stabbing at the sides of her head. "Was it… looking at you funny?" she murmured with a grimace. Goddesses above… so hot in here… and so cold… Her arms and legs were stiff with cold, yet her cheeks burned with the very fires of Death Mountain.
Even as she had the thought, something cool and damp patted lightly at her face – her brow, her cheeks, the sides of her neck. And in the next instant, something pleasantly warm settled on top of her stomach, easing the painful cramps and pangs there.
"What's that?" she croaked, almost laughing as she realized she sounded like the very frog she'd subjected to her experiments.
"A trick from my mother," Link answered quietly. "Put some rice in a bag and heat it up, and it helps soothe sore muscles. Helps stomachaches, too."
Zelda wasn't paying much attention to that anymore. "Am I looking at you funny?" she managed. "Since I'm like the frog now…"
"You don't look anything like a frog," Link assured her, amusement and no small hint of worry tinging his voice. "Just… just try and rest."
"What're you worried about?" Talking didn't hurt so much, she was finding. And the warm rice thing over her stomach really did wonders. "You sound… scared."
A pause, and then a heavy breath. The light tread of his boots as he paced back and forth. "How are you feeling?" he asked, and the words sounded familiar. Has he said that already?
"A little cold on my shoulders," she answered. "But hot on my face. My… my head feels all muggy."
"You have a bad fever," Link said, almost to himself. She felt the back of his hand, cool in all the best ways, against her forehead; she found herself almost leaning in to the touch. Touch was nice.
She cracked her eyes open when he pulled his hand away, and saw him pulling down her cloak from where he'd hung it up by the fire. He spread it gently across her body and lightly tucked it in around her feet and shoulders; it was wonderfully warm from its proximity to the flames, and eased the ache in her cold bones. Noticing Link's face up close, she could see the strain in his eyes, the anxious furrow in his brow. He really was disturbed – how unlike him. "You don't like frogs," she said with a gleeful giggle, and then a pained moan – giggling, it seemed, did no favors to her fragile stomach.
"Not anymore," Link said, flashing her a tired smile before returning to whatever he was working on by the table. "If I ever see a frog again…"
"It's just the hot-footed frogs that are bad," Zelda mumbled, closing her eyes again. And just like that, her mind went from dizzy and disoriented to merely devastatingly tired and pained. She grimaced at the discomfort of not even being in charge of her own head. "The… the hot footed frogs… it must have just been a rumor about the effects." She groaned, sweat dripping down her face at the exertion of stringing together coherent thought. "Who… who even makes elixirs out of frogs, anyway?"
"To be fair, you didn't make it into an elixir," Link noted, the hint of a smile in his voice. "You licked it straight from the wilds. Who knows what all it had on it?" His voice was stern by the end, and Zelda sighed.
He's right. For all I know, the blasted thing could have rubbed through a patch of deadly nightshade before I caught it. She tired to lift her hands, to see if they were having any sort of allergic reaction, only to find herself too weak to move them at all. She frowned, gritting her teeth together against the sudden prick of tears in her eyes. Blast it all – and now I'm sick on vacation, on top of that, she thought glumly. My one chance in months to just – just get out, and try and relax… and this is what happens, and it's my own fault!
"Princess?" Her knight's voice was gentle, but worried – as it had been all day. "You… you're crying… is the pain getting worse again?"
She managed a shaky, weak laugh. "No," she said quietly. "It's just – here I am, restrained to a bed by my own stupid choices when I could have been out studying guardians or conducting research on the silent princess flower, and it's just…" She let out a watery sigh, blinking back the tears. They dripped down her sweaty cheeks. Link was hovering over her again; with a hesitant, calloused finger, he reached out and brushed the tears away.
"Even with the rain?" he asked lightly, keeping his voice cheerful even though his eyes betrayed that ongoing worry, even fear.
"Oh, I don't mind the –" She stopped herself, shivering slightly. Some of the fire-warmth from her cloak had faded, and she was beginning to feel cold again. "Well, maybe I wouldn't have minded the rain," she finished glumly.
"It sounds nice, at least," Link said quietly, turning his gaze towards the rain streaked window, so old and dusty that the only thing she could make out beyond it was a dark green blur. "I've always liked the way rain sounds."
"Me, too," Zelda murmured, closing her eyes. "So… so calming…" She yawned widely.
"Don't fall asleep just yet," Link said quickly. "I'd like to see if you can handle this soup. Rabbit's a decent substitute for chicken, and I found good cleansing herbs that should help get that, er, frog slime out of you. It's almost done."
"Alright," Zelda responded. She opened her eyes again, feeling something settling lightly on her body, and saw him spreading his own cloak across her – the cloak that he had neglected to wear in his foray into the surrounding woods for ingredients for his soup. How… how kind of him, she thought, a small smile springing to her lips as a gentle warmth enveloped her heart. He's… actually very sweet.
Looking back on the moment years later, she didn't actually remember much about the soup except that its warmth filled her from head to toe, easing the aches in her head and her stomach, its steam rising into her face soothing her to sleep. Link was an excellent cook, of course – she was certain it had tasted excellent. But that fleeting pleasure of good-tasting food could not hold as much significance to her as the warmth that spread through her soul, that cocooned her heart. His tender kindness and care, in seeing to her comfort, making her food, keeping her warm and drying her sweat and tears… all that was what she remembered most when she looked back more than a century later.
And the thought that, just maybe, he hadn't been afraid of frogs after all – he had been afraid for her, worried about her well-being. Perhaps all of his acts of kindness had been one of the many ways that he showed her back then just how much he truly cared.
