#kohga is soft for his friends and maz is doing his best | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

inkybirdy · 2 years

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a couple of Maz doodles, ft. Baby Link, from yesterday. ____

The child is crying again. The child is clean and fed, swaddled as well as any other infant in soft fabric and tucked into the woven cradle. The whirring of the cicadas and the babbling of the creeks through the fields, the small drifting orbs from the fireflies in the late Kakariko evening would, in theory, be enough to calm anyone.

Still, the child cries.

Soft, punched-out little whines and sniffles, his small voice hoarse from yet another hour of doing so. They’re whispering sobs by now, but still he heaves and trembles.

Sitting on the porch of the house he can’t bear to go inside, rocking the cradle mechanically with his foot, Maz Koshia barely registers the noise - like he’s hearing it through cotton. He sags heavy where he sits, exhaustion soaking through his bones, his face and arm aching from where marred flesh is attempting to scab and scar.

Past the haze of fatigue, Maz feels a bitter kinship with the child. I didn’t want this, either. He thinks. Both unprepared, both abandoned, both tired.

‘You’re all he’s got. He’s yours, so take him,’ Cotera had said, reaching across his sister’s lifeless body to shove the baby into his arms. Unfortunate. Instead of kinship for the child, Maz supposes he should really only pity it.

“Yeah kid, I know. I get bored to tears hanging around with him, too.” Kohga chuckles at his own jab as he wanders up the path and takes a seat next to Maz on the porch, casting the kid a sympathetic smile.

Sooga has kept his kindhearted distance like the rest of the village, giving Maz space to hold his agony, but imposed solitude has never been Kohga’s style. He’s always been rambunctious, sometimes loud and showmanlike for no reason, never afraid of disrespecting a room or taking up space. It’s a little comforting, Maz supposes, that the weight of the last weeks hasn’t seemed to muffle Kohga much at all. A little.

“Shut up.” Maz's voice cold and hoarse and foreign to himself.

“Your moodiness is gonna set a bad example,” Kohga is undeterred, but the snarkiness in his tone does soften after a moment, “You need to be sweet to him, y’know.”

Maz turns sharp, red-rimmed eyes in Kohga’s direction. However, the glare is short-lived; Maz can only manage it for a few moments before his irritated frown turns back towards the ground. “You take him then, if you know so much.” Another harsh, but half-hearted mutter.

Kohga’s shoulder nudges against Maz’s a few times until he finally looks up, Kohga’s wistful smiling disarming. It makes something catch in Maz’s throat. “Everything’s gonna go to shit.” Kohga’s warm tone doesn’t match his words, “More than it is, already.” “And?” “And we don’t know when. How fast it’s gonna be, what exactly it’s gonna look like.” Maz picks a crack in the porch to glare at, gritting his teeth, “Make your point.” “He doesn’t have to bother.”

Maz blinks, and Kohga waits patiently for a moment. “It’s all done.” Kohga insists. “We’ve got some loose ends, maybe, but not him. You get to decide how he grows up for now, Maz.” The baby heaves another whimper, and Kohga’s smile is fond.. “He doesn’t have to get left in the woods, or sent off to a temple, or thrown in front of a dragon. He gets to have people who give a shit if he dies. He doesn’t have to know about any of this, you get to decide what you tell him. He can just - y’know.” Kohga shrugs, “Be a kid.”

By the time his gaze drifts over to the kid directly, Maz’s eyes are burning. He swallows hard and takes a sharp breath, gripping the edge of the porch. Like he can see clearly how Maz’s brain is reeling, Kogha sits silently for once.

Eventually the words truly settle in the air around them, and Maz shifts forward. Timid, a little shaky, Maz lifts the crying infant out of the cradle and tucks him snug into his arms, warm against his hammering chest. Maz expects the kid to writhe and scream, unsettled by his tension and his fear and his grief - but he doesn’t. Instead, the kid’s tearstained face presses to Maz’s chest, his little hand clinging tightly to what small bit of Maz’s shirt he can grip.

The kid babbles, exhausted and overcome with the inertia of his misery, but he quiets before much longer. He rests, sated. Maz’s heart remains in shambles, the weight of the child on his injured arm aches, but he doesn’t dare readjust. Rather, as gently as if he were afraid to break the new and fragile peace, he presses a kiss to the baby’s head.

“Okay.” Maz murmurs. He surrenders. “Yeah - okay.”

#loz #legend of zelda #loz au #link #master kohga #maz koshia #adventure boyfriends au #crown of calamity #myart #my writing #kohga is soft for his friends and maz is doing his best #link has been a cuddle-bug from day 1

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