Can You Teach Me?

Can You Teach Me How To Feel Safe Again?

AN// TW for body horror. Graphic description ends below the first cut. This chapter is kinda heavy throughout, but it does have a happy ending.

Seething.

Writhing.

Oozing and creeping, filling every imaginable space. Filling her ears and nose, making her glad she keeps her eyes and mouth shut, hard as it may be to not see the monster around her.

The manifestation of evil surrounds her, envelops her senses, watching, waiting for her to slip so it can consume her. As if it didn't have her trapped already.

Waiting for her knight to wake, knowing he might not. Knowing he's the only chance she has left. Knowing it was all her fault, if only she had awoken her powers sooner, if only she had worked harder, worked more, *been* more, maybe he would be fine.

She tries to breathe, but the malice surrounding her is suffocating. She doesn't need to breathe with the magic, but still her lungs scream for air. She made it this long without any, she can wait. It is her destiny, and she will fulfil it, no matter how much it makes her suffer.

But the malice is too strong. It wrenches her lips apart, making her eyes open in shock. She sees Ganon, his grin wide with shark-like teeth. He and the malice are one, pulsating and glowing.

The sight makes her feel sick, but she doesn't see it for long before it punctures her eyes, slicing through her cornea like a razor blade, sliding into her body, mixing with the malice in her mouth and her ears and her nose until she can't feel where Ganon ends and she begins.

He tears through her chest, swallowing her heart and bursting through her ribs. Her flesh burns, hot and wet, coated in boils and covered in holes. She doesn't know how she's still alive. Is she? Or had she perished when the malice overtook her body?

She can think, but can't feel her limbs. She can't see or hear. She can't feel or tell what was around her.

This answers her question. She is dead. This is her fault. She failed all of Hyrule, and now she pays the price. Utter loneliness. Complete nothingness. Total oblivion.

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Zelda shot up, looking around her. She could see. She saw Link beside her, looking over with concern. She could feel his arms around her waist. She could hear the cicadas outside. She could breathe and feel the air in her lungs, and the only thing surrounding her was her burrito of a blanket.

Link lay next to Zelda, on top of his blanket. Whenever he was under it, he awoke feeling like he was being strangled. He needed to be able to escape in an instant, and a blanket would only complicate things. He kept his sword next to the bed. He used to sleep with it, but he stopped when he started sleeping beside Zelda.

He got up twice during the night to make sure the door was locked. When Zelda got up to go to the bathroom, he followed and stood outside the door to keep guard. He made sure to go to sleep after her and wake up before her.

Some would call him paranoid. Those people hadn't been a soldier a century ago. Those people hadn't seen what he had. They hadn't lived in the wild for years, training to save the princess. It wasn't his fault he never felt safe.

"Ganon dream?" Link asked her. Concern was written in the lines on his face. She must have woken him when she had jolted awake.

She nodded. "It was worse this time. He- he won. He slithered inside me and killed me and- and- and-" She buried her head in Link's chest and let out a sob.