BotW Zelink Oneshots

A Silent Lullaby (T)

Until the first decade of utterly pointless loss and destruction had passed, I'd been visiting Link in his dreams. In the beginning, his subconscious bore a near complete resemblance to the Hyrule he and I were familiar with. But each time I returned to see him, the landscape became skewed, losing more of its landmarks each and every day. Just within the first month or two, his mind seemed to have already abandoned all the places and the events in our lives that had led us to this point.

What memories seemed to stay with him longer than any of the rest, however, were those of people.

And so, whenever the opportunity presented itself to me in the midst of my lonely battle with the beast, I came to him. What we spoke of wouldn't have been considered of much import in the real world. Each time, I'd ask him to relay the names and faces of the individuals around us, and in the beginning, he had a fair amount to say about each one of them.

But as time passed, I noticed fewer and fewer faces inhabiting the fields of his dreams. Sooner than I had been able to prepare myself, I would point to a person possessing no face, and he would be able to tell me no more than a couple of basic facts about them, having long forgotten their name. A harsh breeze now swept through the realm, unobstructed by any trees or mountains. I tried to stay strong and continue to keep his company, for I knew what was to come as his world was slowly being purged despite my efforts.

But then the moment finally arrived when he asked me the inevitable, "Who are you?"

Try as I might have, I could do nothing but watch as his precious memories trickled through the gaps between my trembling fingers one by one. What cruelty of this world, I wondered, was responsible for the apparently unbreakable law of exchange between life and memory? Life and identity? The very threads of perception that set one apart from all the rest? With such a law in place, how much was life truly worth?

But the moment this thought had intruded into my conscience, I fled from it as far as I could. If it had been I, there surely wouldn't have been much value left in life after the purge. After all, I already had enough blood on my hands to have my own right to live stripped away. It was not I who had sacrificed herself for her kingdom and for the ones she'd held dear. It was he.

The one who, ironically without knowing it, had changed my wretched, seemingly endless existence, irreversibly.

~ • ~

I could no longer recount the number of seasons that had crawled by since he'd last met my gaze. I could no longer tell if he was even aware of me anymore. I would call out to him in his everlasting dormancy time and time again, but he'd grown completely despondent over these many, many years. Now, all that his dreams consisted of were infinite wanderings across dark, silent, and unmoving wastelands with no other souls to be found.

It was an impossibility to ever know how much longer it would be until the day I'd see him again with my own two eyes. Perhaps I never would. Perhaps it was my fate to keep this mindless incarnation of malice at bay for the rest of time, eternally waiting for the day my knight would wake from his deathlike sleep. Perhaps I would lose my own life before the time came that he'd emerge into the world once more, a mere husk of the boy he had been an age prior.

Nevertheless, I continued to live and to hope.

Each day and night went by, and I fought mercilessly to keep back the catastrophe threatening to end what little remained of it all if I so much as lifted a finger out of place. If I still had any influence over my enchrysalized body, I would have shed enough blood, sweat, and tears to cast the whole of the earth under a great, raging sea.

I fought on with thoughts of him ever at the forefront of my mind. Thoughts of the warm scent of applewood, of calloused palms and course fingernails, and of wordless, tender expressions of love and intimacy that all ears were deaf to but my own. And even if he wouldn't allow me to indulge in these blessings ever again once he'd returned, the alternative was to let him be lost to the world forever, in body, soul, and memory.

So I prayed. I prayed just as I ceaselessly had when I'd still had freedom enough to roam the earth on my own two feet and to breathe in gusts of fresh air with my own two lungs. But unlike then, I prayed not for myself, but for my knight—my gracious, unwavering knight, who undoubtably would have done a great deal more for me had I been the one to have fallen in his stead. I prayed for naught but peace and warmth to accompany him for as long as he slept, and I prayed that his dreams would be untainted by the dread and misery that here surrounded me, all these miles away.

And even though I knew there would be no one waiting for me when light would finally shine upon the land once again, I prayed with all my might that he and I would see that day come before this pitiful life of mine reached its end.