Chapter Text
The downpour of rain trickles off of the roof in steady streams, filling the atmosphere with a quiet, calming sort of noise. The ground is soaked to its very core; it's evident in the puddle of mud beneath the tree just outside of their house. Link can see it from his kitchen window--at least, in those rare moments when the rain lets up. Aside from that gentle pitter-patter, there's no other sign of life. All the people of Hateno are inside, all the animals are quiet, and everything that makes up the usual symphony of life in the village is taking cover. It’s been raining all day.
That’s the thing about the wet season: Link finds it can bring them all to the lowest point. The cool air and petrichor is nice at first, but how long can they go without setting foot outside to bask in the sunlight? When the clouds are gray and persistent, there’s no hope of any warmth shining through. It feels almost as if it’ll go on forever.
In these dreary instances, they try to find simple things to do to keep their spirits up. Most of the time, it isn’t hard. Any time he gets to spend with Zelda is a blessing, whether they can adventure as they do so or not.
Their idea for the night had been to make soup. What's better at combating the cold and the gloom than a warm dish made from the heart? That's what Zelda likes to say whenever they make her favorite: hearty soup. It's rich, creamy, and she loves to help him make it--which is, without a doubt, his favorite part about it. He likes to watch her hands as they stir, as they bring a spoonful to her lips that he pretends he doesn’t see—but she can’t taste anything until all the ingredients have blended together into something magical. In order for that to happen, he needs to finish with the vegetables.
He dries the freshly rinsed radishes and places them upon the wooden cutting board she’d gotten him months ago, when she’d grown tired of watching him use his kitchen counter—hardly fitting for the most forceful of tasks (he loves her for her thoughtfulness, really. It’ll be very hard to damage his countertop if he uses a cutting board). His hands are steady and careful as he takes up the knife. Wielding a blade of any kind is second nature to him, something his hands knew how to do before his fractured mind could remember why. A cooking knife is by no means a sword; it’s small and light and short, but he knows it no less. The sharp edge glides through the radish as if it’s only water.
“—Purah thinks all we really need is a guardian gear to test it on, but acquiring one requires writing to Robbie, and she thinks he hasn’t a clue about her current…um… predicament.”
Zelda’s been working on an upgrade to the Sheikah Slate runes with Purah for weeks. Link gets so amused by her updates and whatever entertainment comes in the form of what the eccentric genius had said that day, but what he treasures most is watching the way Zelda lights up when she speaks of it. A smile, soft and adoring, takes over his features as he looks her way. She’s never lost her spark, has she? To see her bright eyes, sparkling with all the new possibilities life has finally presented her, it’s all he’s ever wanted.
Zelda pauses midway through a sentence when her head turns enough for her to see him. Her cheeks tint pink and her brows raise. There’s a flustered smile on her face when she says,
“What? Why are you looking at me like that?”
Link shrugs his shoulders with a grin. He knows she knows the answer already; it has everything to do with being hopelessly in love with her.
“You have my heart ,” he says, holding up a heart-shaped slice of the radish. Zelda rolls her eyes, playful though it is, and he bites back the cackle that threatens to leave him. She can pretend to hate his puns all she wants; he’s caught her playing along more than enough times to call her bluff.
“You’re ridiculous,” Zelda replies. She shakes her head and Link sets the slice back down with a snort. His careful hands dump the slices of radish on the chopping board into the simmering, creamy soup, then he turns to stick both to-be-cleaned objects into the soapy water of the sink as Zelda stirs the final bits of their meal together.
As soon as his hands are beneath the bubbles, a sharp, burning sensation rips across his fingers. With a loud hiss, Link yanks his hands from the liquid. There’s a thin but rapidly filling stripe of red across the back of his fingers, evidence of the hidden knife he’d bumped into. It must’ve gotten knocked into the sink while he was emptying the cutting board.
“Link!” Zelda exclaims, her hands reaching for him automatically, as if on instinct. The cut stings more than anything else, but when she sticks his fingers beneath a gentle flow of clean, warm water, he has to grip the countertop with his uninjured hand. “Are you alright?”
“Yeah,” he responds through gritted teeth. He’s had broken ribs, collapsed lungs, has been on the brink of death more times than he can count, but a paper-thin cut is the grand winner this evening of what will take him down. That’s the worst, he thinks, about the peaceful moments. When something disrupts the calm, when something adds a nick to his body that has finally become accustomed to comfort, it hurts. “I’m— It’s just a cut, Zel, I’ve had worse.”
She looks at him with a scowl.
“I hate that argument, Link.”
He knows.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m okay, really.”
She studies his face, but now that his fingers have been under the water for a while, the sting is gone. He feels nothing now, nothing but the twinge of guilt in his chest. He knows what seeing his blood does to her.
After a moment of quiet, Zelda softens. She pulls a clean towel from the cabinet below them and withdraws his hand from the water. Careful fingers wrap it in a towel, pressure applying directly to the cuts.
“I can finish dinner,” she offers, but he’s already shaking his head and arguing,
“It’s one hand. I can use the other.”
“It’s stirring , love. Do you really have so little faith in me?”
She’s still a little cross with him, isn’t she? Link hums in false thought, nudging her with his hip.
“I mean, having seen some of the ingredients you’ve used…”
She scoffs and turns away, but he’s already seen the way she’s fighting the smile from her lips. She’s never angry with him for very long. Link gives her the space, though, and he instead sits in his chair at the table. He keeps the pressure on his fingers, fixing his gaze on the towel. There’s no blood seeping through, which is a sign that the cut can’t be that deep. Still, it’s an injury. They both have their…traumas.
He knows pain nearly as well as he knows himself. He’s always supposed it just sort of…came with the title. Hero , prone to all things harmful: monsters, assassins, weaponry he once mastered, ancient machines, and sometimes, his own hubris (what a horribly wonderful rune the bombs had been). Sometimes, what follows the pain is trauma he can never find the proper words to explain. His body relives something his mind cannot recall, so his skin and muscles pulsate beneath ripples of agony and he knows not why. He imagines it has everything to do with the death his body had somehow endured over a century ago.
Other times, like tonight, he can brush it off. He knows, though, that the same isn’t true for Zelda. Her memories are intact; there is nothing keeping her from witnessing the fall of her kingdom over and over again. If there is one thing his amnesia is good for, it’s that he does not know what that feels like—and that thought floods him with guilt.
She worries. She worries about him endlessly, no matter what he says, or how close he is, or what he’s doing. He wishes, more than anything, that he could ease her mind.
Link abandons his seat in favor of crossing their little kitchen, so he can wind his arms around her waist from behind. She falls back into him easily, and he meets her with a kiss to her shoulder in a silent attempt to say, I’m sorry I make you worry so much.
One of Zelda’s hands falls to hold his arms. She hums, a habit he likes to think she picked up from him, and he turns to bury his face in the space between her shoulder and neck.
“I believe our dinner is ready,” she says. He wants to make some stupid joke, but his stomach cuts him off with a humiliating gurgle, and Zelda’s laugh leaves him at a loss for words.
<><><><><>
It’s a few days later that the cut truly begins to bother him. It doesn’t ache, doesn’t bleed; it’s no more than a thin white line across his fingers. But his body… it’s already covered in white lines, thin and thick, bumpy and smooth, and he hates it.
His body is nothing more than a portrait of war.
Scars crosshatch his chest, his back, his arms. There’s a slice of white across his nose, his thighs, and though they feel like any other part of his body, there are phantom pains that lick flames across his form when they’re least welcome.
Zelda’s weight is a comfort, her bare skin so warm against his that he’s glad the bedsheets are knocked aside. His hands smooth over her: the curve of her backside, the length of her spine, the softness of her hair, the warmth of her chest—but before he can really hold her, she catches his hands.
His fingers sting.
Link flinches, drawing his hand back to himself, and it’s a ripple effect down his body. The gashes on his thighs feel as if they’ve split back open, and the wound on his chest burns. There are no injuries, not anymore, but the phantoms haunt him until his body is taut and stiff beneath her. Zelda’s face twists in worry; he hates to worry her.
“Link?” she asks, her hands resting on his shoulders. “Are you alright?”
He hates her touch when he feels as if he doesn’t deserve it. His skin is too marred for her soft lips and gentle worship.
“Do they hurt?” she asks. He hasn’t answered her first question. Her fingers are hovering over the marbled skin of his chest in uncertainty.
“Yes,” he says, because he can’t lie to her even if he tries.
“I’m sorry,” she replies. She shifts to get off of his lap, but he stops her by placing his hands on her thighs. It catches her attention, but when his gaze slips to his injured hand, he releases her. That white line taunts him. His fingers flex.
“It’s not you,” he assures her, just as he always does. “It’s just how my body is.”
“Link…”
It’s his turn to apologize, so he does,
“I’m sorry. It’s…”
Not you. It’s never been you. I’m the broken one; I’m the one scar-riddled and mad. No sane person has scar tissue that aches.
“You know I don’t mind,” she says, gliding feather soft fingertips down the length of his arms until she’s tracing a scar from his elbow to his wrist. “I think they’re-“
“They’re not.”
Zelda fixes him with a look that’s full of pity and something else he can’t place. He averts his eyes, drawing his arms to himself and out of her grasp. There’s a moment of thick, heavy silence between them before she slides off and to the side of him instead. Guilty, Link turns his body to face her and wraps her in his arms, murmuring an apology with lips pressed to her forehead.
“I know you hate them,” she quietly states. Her hands are splayed warm on his back; he can tell she’s taking caution to avoid his scars. How strange it is to think that she’s gotten to know his body so well that she remembers things she cannot even see. “But I wish you could see your scars the way I do.”
There’s no point in wishing for something that can never happen, but he refrains from saying that aloud. He’s been bitter enough as it is; he loathes when his body interrupts his time with her.
“I wish I could just be rid of them,” he replies.
“Would you really, if you could? If there was a way to erase them, you’d do it?” she asks.
“Yes.”
She falls quiet, her brows furrowed, and he knows by the silence that she’s thinking intently. Her mind is all sorts of brilliant and clever, but he doesn’t know if there’s much of a fix for something like this.
Goddess knows he might just be fragmented forever.