#which. y'know. constantly and uncomfortably reminds him of being fd-li.nk and all the things that entails :') | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

balladetto · 6 months

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enter the forest / accepting / @guideoftime

"Tell me what's happening to you. I want to understand."

You really shouldn't, sits at the tips of his fingers.

"Long story," Link signs with halting motions, hands stiff and cleaving through empty space like an awkwardly swung sword. It's so long a story it may as well be his entire life — is his entire life. How do you tell someone something like that? Where do you start with something like that? From the beginning, logically, but that's everything he doesn't think about. Everything he's never shown anyone. Everything he's felt and feels, with his own face-heart-soul or not.

All of it is everything in itself.

I don't belong, he could say, but he'd have to follow the thread to completion with even when I think I do. I am growing into a body that wasn't mine, he could say, but he'd have to explain what's so upsetting about and now it is. There's a lot he could offer for even a fraction of a glimpse into "what's happening to him", but won't 'cause Sheik— Sheik wants so much more.

Link is being asked to pry himself open. To consider his hands and his voice and his shoulders and all that he presently is, and connect them to memories that share their shape: the monsters he's killed, the man he's felled, the powers he's defeated for times and people he'll never see again. He pulls a layer of skin aside to find the muscle beneath contracted the way he won't ever forget hefting the Fierce Deity's sword feels, and sets the membrane back down with stitches made of numb silence.

He looks away from Sheik. His head dips, fingers flitting between outlines of words that don't mean anything — don't amount to anything — and Link's breath audibly shakes against the roof of his mouth as he tries reaching for his voice. It unsticks from the walls of his throat, stumbling up and against his teeth on some indistinct noise.

Just as it did the last time he heard it, changed and deeper than he's comfortable with, it shrivels up like something dead on his tongue.

( There's a part of him that's selfishly glad Sheik's noticed. Link doesn't talk much, but his quiet hasn't been a total, utter silence like it's been these past weeks since those seven years that didn't happen. Or maybe it's not Sheik at all. Maybe it's Zelda who noticed — maybe it's Zelda who asked Sheik to be here, to ask this, to "want to understand". Link can't be sure through the fog of buzzing noise his mind has made of his thoughts. )

"I'm remembering," he finally settles on, thumb twisting harder than it needs to on his temple. It doesn't clear anything up. Link doesn't intend for it to. He only needs to give his companion something that's not a non-answer; Sheik at least deserves that. "I'm remembering. All the time."

#guideoftime #( as always; thanks for this and your patience!!#setting this in his grown verse. but like. at that stage where he's close to the build he has as fd-li.nk #which. y'know. constantly and uncomfortably reminds him of being fd-li.nk and all the things that entails :')#which snowballs and triggers just. the longest episode of this is not (how i want) my body (and i can't even escape from it this time)#and insecurities. can't forget about those #li.nk vc: puberty was already hellish enough and now i gotta deal with my dysmorphic issues on a daily basis???? )#* lionheart / ic.#* lionheart / answer.#* ic / para.#* v / to make a home of this body.#long post cw #death mention #ask to tag /

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