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druddigoon · 3 years

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bede and gloria; late night confessions

[it’s been a while since i worked on this, i tried to finish this to something ao3-worthy but the muse is just not comin ;_; didn’t quite get to the meat of your prompt tho it’s still at 1.5k words and full of drunk shenanigans!]

Bede doesn’t know how he got here.

There’s something digging into his side, uncomfortable and wet (a log, some part of him helpfully supplies, before his thoughts sink into oblivion) as he half-squats, half-slumps onto the peat. Bioluminescent mushrooms pulse like strings of faerie lights at the edges of his periphery; he closes his eyes and feels the pleasant hum of television static against his bones, loose-limbed and sluggish.

“Bede. Hey.” Someone’s standing him, shaking him. Glor-Gloria? What’s the champion doing here? She’d had more pressing obligations to take care of than visiting him, right? Unless she was…

He sits bolt upright. “Training.”

“Hey. Bede no, you’re in no state to train.” She’s grabbing his shoulders, so irritably he shrugs her hands off. “Okay, fine. Haterenne, help me please?”

“Hissssss.”

“I know, it’s my fault, you can hate me for this later. Could you teleport him to Opal before he pukes on me?”

“I won’t puke on you.” He attempts to stand up, wobbles, and relocates onto the log, looking up at her like he only intended to shift his seat all along. “Just...don’t say a word of this to Opal, she doesn’t know I’m rende...rendezvu...meeting you for training at night.”

Gloria makes a face like a goldeen, open-mouthed and slack-faced, before reeling herself in, blowing her bangs out of the way in exasperation. “What’re we going to do then?”

“Train.” The log is awfully comfortable.

She throws her hands up, stalking a ways away into the undergrowth. “Fine, you win. Hatterene, he’s yours now.”

“Rene.”

“This’ll wear off,” he insists after her. “Besides, we still have an entire night. It’s only--”

--Three in the morning.

He knows this because it’s a routine ingrained into his internal body clock, reinforced by Sylveon sitting at his bedside and repeatedly probing him in the cheek. She dodges the togekiss sleep mask he flings at her, mewling incessantly from her safe space behind his rarely-used study desk as he fumbles the blanket off himself.

Check surroundings. Judging by the iron klefki wards she hung in front of her door every night, Opal’s asleep across the hall; woman can sure sleep like the dead when she wants to. It’s quiet, empty. The portobellos growing on the kitchen walls ebb with the faint chartreuse of early morning. He pulls on his gear as quickly and quietly as possible, recalling Sylveon into her ball before climbing out his bedroom window.

Despite most of the Ballonlea population being asleep, the Glimwood Tangle is teeming with activity: impidimps chittering from the trees, the echoing croons of hatterene in the distance, a male indeedee wandering around collecting swathes of amanita--most likely for some courtship ritual. He’s been gym leader for nearing six months now, and they no longer saw him as an intruder on their turf. The oranguru that always meditates underneath a wisteria-choked tree barely gives him the side eye as he passes.

At the edge of the faerie ring, in their designated meeting location, he finds the Champion resting between the boughs of a tree.

She’s already noticed him, of course--squirrelly, quick-eyed and observant, Challenger Bede had scribbled in his league-issue notepad, where he kept track of rivals and how to counter them--and he watched out of the corner of his eye as she made her way down, landing like it’s all she’s known, to fall and pick herself up.

“The usual?” He prompts.

“Nope.” Something clinks in her tired leather bag as she straightens herself. “I was thinking of having a battle today. Haven’t had one outside a boring league stadium in weeks.”

He makes a noise at the back of his throat reserved for when the region’s champion calls million-dollar, painstakingly designed entertainment buildings “boring”. Then again, Gloria never cared much for the stark geometry of commercial buildings.

“But first. I brought something.” After rifling through her bag, she produces a jar of clear fluid with more flourish than she ever showed in her league battles, handing it to him.

He unscrews the lid for a whiff and immediately regrets it. “Don’t tell me you smuggled alcohol all the way from Wyndon.”

“Aren't you legal?”

“Yes, I am. You aren’t.” Hatterene take him if Opal caught him in a hangover the next morning. At least Gloria had her own condo.

“It’s only illegal if they catch you.” She replies, and Bede would agree wholeheartedly on any other day, if not for his desperate need to retain the vestiges of self-control slipping through his fingertips. Before he could protest, she takes the jar, tips it back to take a sip, then returns it to him.

He supposes he’s not a stranger to alcohol. While Rose never greeted him in-person, Bede had attended fancy meet-ups with potential patrons on behalf of the man (Galar loves a good rags-to-riches story, Oleana always told him) and let himself enjoy a flute or two of champagne on corporate dime.

One sip. Surely nothing would come of one sip.

“Alright,” he relents, “I suppose it’ll take more than a--

--Couple swallows in and he’s starting to feel lightheaded, the tips of his fingers strangely numb like that one time he accidentally stuck them into Gardevoir’s moonblast. Damn Opal and her “fairy boot camp”, he could bet on his favorite soap opera that no other trainer got their leg tied to their pokemon and forced to three-leg a batt--

“Drink.” Gloria orders, pushing the empty mason jar she refilled with water up to his lips. It tasted slightly viscous when he drank and...how did she get this anyways? Was it from her golisopod? Was he drinking bug spit?

“Bede. About your. Uh.”

“We’ve disgus...discussed this to death already. I didn’t mean. Anything with the finalist speech. It was the heat of the moment, I was focused, and you were all that was on my mind--”

“--So you were thinking about me then?”

“What?”

“Anyways,” she continues uneasily, “Could you recall Hatterene? She looks like she wants to tear me to shreds with her mind.”

“Oh.” He glances back and, sure enough, Hatterene is right behind him, every strand of hair bristling with psychic energy. “Hattie, behave. You’re better than this.”

Hatterene trains the brunt of her attention to him, and there’s the low before a tidal wave, thrumming in his skull like a shotgun blast before she presses her pokeball and enters it with a huff.

He hears an audible exhale from Gloria in the ensuing silence. “I haven’t heard you call her ‘Hattie’ in a long time.”

“Old habit.” She’s long outgrown it now, but he still remembers her as a hatenna small enough to fit within the cradle of his arms, the outlier of the batch Macro Cosmos had donated to his orphanage. Most likely a breeding reject--too smart for her own good, too ill-behaved and unruly to be championship material--because nobody liked a pawn that didn’t follow orders. He knew how it went. “My younger self’s nicknaming skills left much to be desired.”

They’ve come a long way since then.

“That’s sweet,” she says, and normally Bede would bristle at a challenge to his dignity, but today his limbs are sluggish and the bottomless pit of hatred he’d often found himself visiting seemed strangely empty.

"You were friends since you were young," Gloria clarifies, "And she obviously cares for you a lot--I've heard most hatterenes are as misanthropic as psychics come. It's nice that you've managed to keep it strong through your gym challenge."

"Gloria..."

"What's done is done though. I'm Champion, he's a researcher, and you're drunk out of your mind." When Bede sputters in response, she tips the jar of water in his general direction. He's forced to catch it so she doesn't spill the entirety of the contents on his clothes.

Definitely bug spit. But if this is the fix to the pressure building behind his eyes then he may as well take it. Even if that damn taste--

--is not at all what he expected: medicine-grade and overpowering, a hyper beam to his sinuses so powerful it forces him to tears. If this thing is safe to drink, the only reason would be because no bacteria would bear to live in it. He manages to swallow purely by willpower, refusing to spit it out in front of Gloria; whatever face he saves is instantly destroyed when she bursts out laughing at his expression.

“I’m sorry,” she says, not sorry at all. Bede stares intensely at a cluster of mushrooms metres away and prays it’s too dark to catch the blood rushing to his face. “I thought-I thought you’d take it better. Maybe I overestimated you.”

“And should I be under the assumption you’re a heavyweight drinker?”

Gloria shrugs in lieu of an answer. “Leon always brought some kind of new wine or liquor when he visited home, and shared some of it with Hop. Hop shared some of it with me.”

Unbelievable. And to think Leon was lauded as a children’s role model. Bede resists the urge to rub away a phantom headache.

#drudwrites #prompt fill #bederia #bede pokemon #gloria pokemon

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inthebrokenplaces · 5 years

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He hadn’t intended to buy it. It wasn’t necessary. It didn’t help him survive. But when Bucky saw the journal in a store window, it made him stop. Something about it tugged at his memory. It was dark brown leather, a gold ribbon hanging from its creamy pages. It was at such contrast to everything else he owned, which was worn, battered, utilitarian. But he was overcome with the feeling of a pen gliding smoothly over paper, and he reasoned he could use it for intel. So he’d quickly purchased it and disappeared into the crowd, shoving the bag into the inside of his jacket like he was hiding a piece of precious treasure.

It was three days before he opened it. At first he just stared at the pages. Speech was so difficult, and he was half afraid to find out writing would be too. It would be like stripping him of all communication with the rest of the world.

He touched the tip of the pen to the paper.

Steve.

The name came easily, and he breathed a little sigh of relief. He tried another word.

Museum.

War.

Friend.

A knot in his mind seemed to loosen, and soon Bucky’s hand was flying across the page. He wrote down everything he’d read in the museum, everything that had happened on the helicarrier. As he wrote, flashes of images flew through his head.

I remember him, but only in pieces. When I think of him, I think of summer heat and baseball. I think of the smell of a city, car exhaust. I think of words that I can’t name but their feelings are there. I feel more than I can picture. Will it always be this way? Who am I?

Who am I?

Bucky sat back in the chair and looked at his cramped, spiky writing covering several pages. It had been so much easier than talking. A small smile crossed his face. He liked this. It was familiar, the feeling of the pen in his hand, like he’d done it a thousand times before. He took the picture of Captain America he’d torn out of the museum pamphlet and put it next to his writing. Then he closed the journal and put it in a drawer.

He hadn’t intended it to become a habit, but he wrote in the journal every day. He filled pages—with memories as they slowly trickled in, with frustrations when they didn’t, with his loneliness, with his guilt. He realized how long it had been since had confided anything to anyone. Since he’d been allowed to have anything to confide in the first place. It was almost like having a friend.

Today I managed to speak a few words to the grocer. The words were there in my mind, but I couldn’t make them come out. There are so many languages filtering through me, and I can’t speak a word in any of them. I’m a doll, locked away in silence. A machine. Humans communicate. How can I move on when I can’t become human again?

In Prague, he went to a library, and he learned about something called expressive aphasia. He spent hours researching it, looking up treatment therapies. His stomach dropped when learned he’d missed the most critical window for recovery. But he wasn’t a typical person. Maybe he could find his voice again.

He wrote down everything he’d learned in his journal and left the library.

At a small electronics shop, he bought an MP3 player. Back in his tiny apartment, he loaded it up with music, just like the journal articles had said. He started with simple rhythmic intonations, and the sat at the desk tapping his fingers in time to the beat. At first he just hummed along, fear clogging his throat. What if it didn’t work?

Low and rough, he started to sing—just one line:

“My name is Bucky Barnes.”

His voice creaked like old furniture and it wasn’t in any particular key, but the words had come out smoother than anything he’d said since DC. Bucky let out a sharp breath and sat back. He tried to say the sentence again, just say it without the melody.

“…N…name…”

He swallowed and tried again.

“My…Buck…”

The words repeated in his brain like a bullet ricocheting around a room, but they died in his throat no matter how hard he tried to push them out. He sat still for a moment, clenching his fists, and then cleared everything from the desk in one violent sweep of his arm. The MP3 player, his journal, the lamp, his books—they all went flying across the room. Bucky breathed heavily, shame and frustration vying for control, and his mind started to spin. He felt metal bands closing around his arms and he threw himself from the chair, sending it clattering to the floor. He felt the machine coming down around his head and his entire body tensed. His lungs seized up and he paced, slashing violently with his arms as if fighting phantoms.

For fuck’s sake, it was five little words.

Bucky sat down on the edge of the bed, a thrill of fear at the savagery coursing through him. He wasn’t that person anymore. He had control now. Whispers edged into his brain, devils singing despair. Weapon. Soldier. Killer.

After a few moments, he walked over where his journal lay splayed on the floor. He sank down to the stained carpet and started to write.

Did they erase me entirely? Am I only a ghost? I have feelings, I have memories, but I’m not a man. I gave them mission reports. Could I only speak to them? Was this their control too? How will I ever know what’s real again—what I can trust again?

He looked down at his feet, and he saw the picture of Captain America that had fallen out of the journal. He picked it up and studied it, and then began to write again.

He was always Steve to me. I remember hating how much was put on him. I was supposed to protect him. Now he must protect the world from me. I should put a bullet in my brain and end this. It would be better—safer—for everyone. Steve would never know. I’d simply disappear, a story told to scare people that evaporates with the morning sun. I should put a bullet in my brain. I should put a bullet in my brain.

So why don’t I?

He looked at the picture again. Feelings he didn’t understand burgeoned in his chest, and they were warm and aching and filled with such a profound longing.

I want to see him again. But not like this. Not when I’m broken and scarred. I want to be the Bucky he remembers, the one he fought for on the helicarrier. God, how I want to see him again. My heart bursts with things my mind can’t remember. Is this selfish? I owe the world my death. But maybe I owe it some good, first. What if I lose control? Will Steve stop me again, or will he trust my fractured mind?

The sun marched across the floor and he sat there with his journal against his knees and his head in his hands. Not a small part of him still thought death was a better option, especially if he never regained the ability to communicate. How much longer could he take this, trapped in his head with his demons and unable to set them free?

His eyes kept returning to that picture. He ran one finger over it, and was met with the sudden sensation of skin beneath his fingertips, a body pressed tight against his, and the oh-so-sweet feeling of home. He remembered the smell of lavender and stars bright in the sky. That ache in his chest intensified until he doubled over, and for the first time, he fully understood why he felt so hollow. He was missing the biggest part of him.

Gathering up the things he’d thrown to the floor, he once again arranged them neatly on the desk and turned on the lamp. He put on the rhythmic music again, and resumed tapping his fingers. He tried more sentences. He worked at it all night, and it was almost as torturous as the electroshock. His brain felt blurred and overworked, but by morning, if he tapped out a beat and put a little melody into his voice, he could string a few simple sentences together.

That became his routine. Move cities every couple weeks, practice with the rhythms, write in his journal.

Steve fought in Sokovia today. I saw the news and all I could feel was fear. He was saving the world, again. The weight of the world on his shoulders, again. He’s going to die, and that leaves me feeling cold.

I am a coward.

The world moved on, and the chaos in his mind seemed to ebb and flow. Some days he was left huddled in a ball in the corner, pounding his fists against his skull, trying to figure out which thoughts were his and which memories were true. Trying to bear the burden of all his sins. Those days everything he ate or drank tasted like blood. It was in the air he breathed, like he was drowning in it.

Those were the days he thought about bullets and Steve.

One night, as he made a simple meal, he started humming. The tune was familiar, and that warmth rose in his chest again, flooding him with feelings of home and comforting and longing.

He started to sing. At first, his voice was hoarse and rusty, like the scraping of metal, but as the words became clearer in his mind and found their way to his tongue, he grew more sure of himself. His voice blossomed into a full baritone, still sounding whiskey rough but in a sonorous way. He smiled as he sang, pleased at the words flowing from his lips:

Stars shining bright above you Night breezes seem to whisper "I love you" Birds singing in the sycamore trees Dream a little dream of me

Say nighty-night and kiss me Just hold me tight and tell me you'll miss me While I'm alone and blue as can be Dream a little dream of me

Stars fading but I linger on dear Still craving your kiss I'm longing to linger till dawn dear Just saying this

Sweet dreams till sunbeams find you Sweet dreams that leave all worries behind you But in your dreams whatever they be Dream a little dream of me

Stars fading but I linger on dear Still craving your kiss I'm longing to linger till dawn dear Just saying this

Sweet dreams, till sunbeams find you Gotta keep dreaming leave all worries behind you But in your dreams whatever they be You gotta make me a promise, promise to me You'll dream, dream a little of me

While he sang, he thought of Steve.

That night, he looked up music from the 1940s and found the song he’d been singing. Ella Fitzgerald and Count Basie Orchestra. Count Basie. The name stirred a memory, and he downloaded more of their music, along with some other songs that gave him that same feeling of warmth and home.

Singing joined his routine.

He found if he picked a faster melody than just the rhythmic tapping, he could speak more fluently. It was still like feeding a magazine through a barrel and hoping it didn’t jam, but Bucky was pleased with himself. In public, though, his speech was still stilted and halting. It took practice to transform the sing-speech into something fluid, and finally into something resembling normal. He worked so hard at it, disguising the aphasia the way he disguised his arm, and in moments of stress it flared up.

So when Steve showed up in his apartment in Bucharest, he found himself voiceless for a few moments. When he spoke, it was in short, clipped sentences, and he had to hold a melody in his head. This wasn’t Steve’s Bucky. This was still…some form of Bucky, but not Steve’s. He was dangerous, a problem. Go, just go, he silently begged, but he remembered Steve. Remembered he’d never run away from Bucky, only toward him.

When the police arrived and the fight began, it felt stupid to grab the journal. The MP3 player he could replace, but the journal—it was a piece of himself. So he’d snatched it up, unable to leave it behind.

It would prove vital after their fight with Zemo. After he became the Soldier once again.

When it was all over, when the fight had ended and he was safely ensconced in Wakanda, he read over the journal entries. Saw how far he’d come. It motivated him on the days when he wanted to give up, when he felt like there was no fixing him. Princess Shuri gave him a new music player, this time loaded with some modern music as well, and brought in speech therapists to work with him. She gently worked on his mind, disentangling the HYDRA programming from himself and for the first time he felt some of he whispers quiet. He felt solid earth beneath his feet and breathed air into his lungs and thought things that were Bucky’s. He still wasn’t Steve’s Bucky. He was someone different now. But he was someone, not something.

Sitting in his small room he called home on the Wakandan countryside, he took out his journal. It was so worn and tattered, the beautiful leather scratched and beaten from years of being on the run. The pages were wavy with the weight of his writing, and the gold ribbon was frayed. But it still functioned. It was held together by a string, but it held. And its contents were true and real and formed the heart of a man.

Steve is somewhere now, and I’m here. I don’t know when I’ll see him again. When we met, I couldn’t speak. Some of it is the aphasia, but I know some of it is that I don’t know what to say to him. So much time has passed. So much has happened. I know I’m not the same—is he? How can he be? I think of him and pieces fit together in my head, but the picture isn’t complete. Not yet. Maybe one day. Maybe next time I can tell him everything I want to say, how he kept me holding on, how he stayed with me through all the years, even when I didn’t recognize it. How I don’t want a life without him in it.

I worry it’s too much. I worry I’m too much. He’s borne the burden for so long, I’m not sure he knows how to set it down anymore. That’s why I have to get better. I have to take all these broken parts and make something out of them. Because I’ll be damned if I become a problem for him again. So, next time I see him, maybe I won’t be able to say what I want. But I know something I can say, and I think he’ll know what I mean.

Dream a little dream of me.

#cw: suicide mention #cw: mental illness #cptsrogers #fics #i'm such stucky trash omg #re: and I'll shred 'em all and go with you; steve #c: ghost;

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avinrydarchive · 6 years

Text

Silent Princess

Author: AvinRyd Fandom: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Rating: G Pairing: Link/Zelda Word Count: ~1700

He’s studying, studying me. “What’s wrong?”

“Twenty-three.” He says eventually, that quizzical frown only deepening. An enigmatical answer.

“I’m sorry?”

He sighs. Blue floods my vision as he truly meets my gaze once again. “The number of words you’ve said, to anyone, in the past two weeks since we left Kakariko. Twenty-three."

Because the Silent Princess is a rare flower, indeed.

Read on AO3: link

I’ve always thought evenings in the wilds of Hyrule are more beautiful than words could ever express, and tonight is no different. To attempt to describe… Oh, where to begin? Though the sun has not yet fallen, the grotto in which we’ve made camp is cooling quickly. What’s left of the day’s light catches on Akkala’s rough cliffs and bluffs all around, highlighting them in pinks and golds. The wind is chill on my skin, but the fire before me is warmth and light; to my right is another such light. Firelight picks out strands of gold in Link’s tawny hair as he’s bent over something in his lap. I can see a glint of steel. Peeling apples for dinner, it seems. His focus is admirable; I myself can’t seem to keep my mind on any one thing for more than a few minutes.

The pastels of sunset have drained from the sky, leaving dregs of grey in their wake. Slowly, slowly, the dark of night rolls in with it’s sprinkling of stars. The campfire pops and spits to send it’s sparks up to join those silver gleams. I’m drifting. With every star that appears, an instance of a century passes my mind. Connected to every breath of life, every blade of grass, I remember. The veil of Hylia’s mantle lifts and I hear a child brought, screaming, into the world. I feel moss creep over ruined towns. I smell the earth of fresh-tilled fields and fresh-dug graves. I see-

“Zelda?”

I see champion-blue eyes, far closer than expected. Reality snaps back around me, juttering and spinning, and I have to anchor my sight on Link’s face, my perception of the warmth of him suddenly inches away. I don’t move, can’t move with the world still slotting back into place.

“Hmm?” I manage in reply. His mouth twists and his brows draw together in an expression I know well. He’s studying, studying me. “What’s wrong?”

“Twenty-three.” He says eventually, that quizzical frown only deepening. An enigmatical answer.

“I’m sorry?”

He sighs. Blue floods my vision as he truly meets my gaze once again. “The number of words you’ve said, to anyone, in the past two weeks since we left Kakariko. Twenty-three. That’s including your formalities with the Zora royal family. Are you-” His voice seems to balk, rebellious, but he presses on, “Forgive me, princess, but I’m concerned. I’ve never known you to be so...quiet.”

Replies build up in my throat: ‘Where do you get off picking at my silence, what with your own reticence with words?’(Even if he’s been more talkative than I’ve ever heard since the Calamity’s defeat.) ‘You haven’t known me for a century.’ ‘You’ve been counting?’ ‘This isn’t a matter of my safety, why should you be concerned?’ They stack and press, unable to escape, building pressure in my throat and they won’t leave.

“I- That is-” I stammer. I’m choking on words, on thoughts, and it hurts. Cool air rushes into my lungs and I try to focus on it, on anything but the powerless feelings within and the dark encroaching on my vision from without.

Breath, still such a novel sensation after a century of immaterial existence. Its noise, its gentle force, the tidal push and pull, they press back the dark and the fear. Head cleared, if only a little, I gather my thoughts. Link is right, of course. Since my ill-considered question of his memories, I haven’t spoken more than a few words to my knight. That’s not to say we don’t communicate; catching of eyes, brushes of touch, a nod or facial expression in response to whatever he’s said, all have kept us together these few weeks of travel and survey. I know my silence is out of character, truly I do. It’s just- The words won’t come. Even now, I reach for them and they slip away. Perhaps if I try to work through this aloud? If not reassurance, it will give him context for my silence.

“Link,” I start, hearing my voice for what it now is: rusty and strained from disuse. “I did not mean to alarm you. The fact of the matter is I haven’t had a spoken conversation with anyone for nearly a century. My years of containing the Calamity- Hylia and I existed together in a realm of thought and possibility. My body in stasis, my mind strung together with Her’s, there was little need to speak with words.

“Early on, I couldn’t bear it, having my unfiltered thoughts visible to anyone, even a Goddess. I spoke, I screamed, I raged, and the Calamity...he drank it in. And once I’d run myself ragged, my words were turned back upon me and I couldn’t- I had to stop. For years, decades, I cloaked myself in Hylia’s protection where he could not reach me with my own vitriol. I spoke only as a distraction after that. The Calamity would set his sights on a gathering of life, on your resting place, on the Champions yet resting in their patience, and I would gather his attention back with a witty jab or affected cry of despair. Towards the end, I confess, it wasn’t so affected…

“His wrath was- Link, I can’t even describe it. Even though he’s gone, I can feel it. He’s right there, behind me around me above me, and if I keep talking he’ll be-” My breath is coming in shallow; I feel my eyes widening as black creeps into my view of clenched hands upon my knees. “He’ll- I can’t, I can’t- ”

That horrible pressure is building once again, air barely whistling past the huge lump in my throat, but I have to continue. He needs to understand, needs to know. The world is spinning around me, chaos and noise again, just like the castle but there’s no golden mantle to wrap myself in this time. My lips stammer but can no longer form the words. Ice floods the pit of my stomach, spreads, and I shiver violently. It’s so cold and I’m still a failure and-

The softest of touches stills my runaway mouth. A firm grasp encircles my wrist in warmth. Drowning out the static is a low rumble of sound in my ears, comforting and husky and unmistakably Link. His touch, voice, the scent of him so near mixed with the campfire smoke; even my fear-addled mind can’t drown them out. I latch onto the reprieve desperately, even as I attempt once more to speak in thanks.

“Hush, shhhh,” Link shushes me, his finger on my lips pressing just the slightest bit, “I’m sorry. You’re alright, you can stop.”

He continues in that vein and it all blends together in a protective cocoon about me. Safe, safe, safe. My breathing slows, deepens; the tightness around my windpipe eases; the darkness I see is just the black behind my eyelids and my mind begins to settle. The finger against my lips moves, tracing a sparkling path of sensation up the line of my jaw and his hand sinks into my hair, cupped at the base of my skull. He leans in until our noses brush, foreheads pressed together, and I open my eyes.

He is very close, so close his eyelashes almost brush my cheeks when he blinks. I have long envied those lashes, contributing to that understated beauty he has that I couldn't match if I tried. In my secret romantic imaginings before the Calamity, this was the point where Link would tilt his head just slightly and catch my lips in a kiss. Not now, though. Now he is just close, sharing space as easily as the breaths we share. Our gazes catch and hold for a long moment. When he finally speaks it’s in that same soft, low tone, but with the suggestion of steel behind it.

“Zelda,” he says, “thank you for telling me, but I never, ever want you to feel like you have to speak when the words won’t come. Not to me. I get it, I understand. Maybe not about the Calamity, but the fear of having your words stolen away to hurt you later? Every word of mine is a double-edged sword and I trust very few to have my back so armed.”

The grip about my wrist slackens as his hand moves to clasp my own, small and soft compared to his swordsman’s grip. He brings our twined hands up to press my knuckles to his lips in a gesture that has my breath catching hard for an entirely different reason than before, and as I try to contain my gasp he murmurs into my skin,

“However you need to talk, I’ll find a way to listen,” and he breaks away just enough to bring his mouth from our hands to my brow, his kiss a firm pressure as he holds me close and I try not to cry. I fail in that endeavor, but it feels less miserable than most failures as hot tears spill across my face.

We stay that way for what could be another hundred years. Just as the last age, time passes in a blur of feeling; though this time it is wonder, not terror. The Akkalan night grows colder around us and I shiver, unintentionally breaking the spell. Link barely moves when he reaches for the hood lying beside me, but it’s far enough that my hand tightens spasmodically around his. He grins at that and in the firelight it’s hard to tell, but I think I see his cheeks pink, just a little. In a deft movement, he drapes the hood about my shoulders with one hand, hearth-spun Hylian cloth chasing away the chill.

I bring up my free hand to scrub the last of the tears from my face, but he catches it mid-way. I feel a curious noise leave me, but he says nothing, just takes both of my hands and begins to move them, place them in a manner that’s somewhat familiar. It’s- yes, it’s the hand-signs I often saw him use when conversing with Urbosa and Mipha back in our old lives. His eyes come up to meet mine, green to blue.

“Sometimes this is easier.” He says, simply.

And, as I find through the next hour before we curl up to sleep, (in the same bedroll tonight,) it is.

#zelink #botw #loz botw #breath of the wild #link/zelda #AvinRyd #fics of ryd

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