The Both Of Us | Zelink X The Last Of Us

Chapter Sixteen

Zelda's pov

Doors opening startles me awake. I fell asleep in the corner of Revali's room. Now there's someone here.

Voices carry up the stairs along with heavy footsteps and I begin to shake. All I can think of is when those men were tying me up to rape me. Did they follow us here?

"Zelda!"

It's Link! Relief washes through me and I get up as fast as I can and unlock the door. I open it as he was reaching for the handle. He's covered in blood and grime and he smells like death and decay.

"You said you were only going to be gone for two hours," I say weakly. I was scared they weren't coming back after the hours ticked by.

"We ran into some problems." He holds up the gun he'd given me earlier. "Don't fucking leave my guns lying around. I gave it to you to protect yourself and you left it downstairs."

"I forgot it-"

"It doesn't do much good if it's not on you when you need it," he snaps and shoves it into his holster. He walks off and I watch him. He left me here for five hours and he goes right back to being short with me. I don't understand. I thought we were starting to get to know each other.

Revali shoves past me into his room. His expression is hard and he has blood on him as well. He opens a drawer and grabs some clothes before shoving them into my hands.

"Give these to him and you can sleep wherever," he spits. "Just keep it down if you fuck."

My eyes go wide and my cheeks flush pink. "We-we don't-"

"I don't care." He slams the door shut in my face. I push the lewd thought from my head and head into the bedroom Link went to. It has a bathroom in it and it's where I took my shower earlier.

The light is on in the bathroom and I hear the shower running. I should leave the clothes on the bed and sleep in the other bedroom. But I don't want to be alone so I wait. I sit on the quilt with the clothes in my lap and listen to the water in the shower. As more time passes, I neatly fold the clothes. It's a pair of jeans, similar to the ones he wears now and a light gray shirt that has a hole at the seam around the collar. There's also another button up, this one black. I had found a white tank top in the other bedroom along with a faded red zip up jacket that I left unzipped.

He stays in the shower for almost an hour until I hear the water turn off. Now I really should leave. I should and I don't.

The door in front of me opens and he walks out with a towel around his waist. His dog tags hang down over his sculpted chest which is still wet from the shower. My gaze travels down to his stomach and the bumpy muscles under his skin. All of his bruises are visible: the patchy splotches on his stomach, the purple handprints around his throat.

"Just gonna stare?" he says and I come to my senses.

"N-no," I squeak. I shouldn't have been staring. I hold out the folded stack of clothes. "Revali told me to give these to you."

He takes them with his left hand and I look at his tattoo. It's a snarling wolf and a sword. It covers the area from just below his elbow to his wrist on the inside of his arm. I was right about it covering a scar.

"When did you get this?" I ask while lightly touching the tattoo and the scar. It almost looks like burn scars I've seen before but it has a small, curved line of irregular dents. Sometimes the skin heals in strange ways I suppose.

He yanks his hand back. "Why do you ask so many damn questions?" he snaps.

"I'm just curious."

"Well stop."

"Okay." I sit silently and we stare at each other. Impa told me to not ask personal questions or he'd get upset. He was fine with my questions earlier although this seemed to have pushed it.

"You could turn around so I can get dressed," he suggests sarcastically.

"Right." I turn my head and look at the painting on the wall. It's a field of flowers with rolling hills and a farmhouse almost like this one. There's cows grazing in the background. I want to pet a cow. They're so gentle and cute when they chew on grass.

The sound of denim distracts me from the painting and my thoughts of fluffy cows. I sneak a quick peek. He's wearing the jeans now and he pulls the shirt over his head. He catches me looking at him as he pulls it down to cover his muscular front.

"You should sleep. We leave right after we get that truck running."

"Okay," is all I say before laying down. I fall asleep quickly. I haven't slept in an actual bed in five years and it feels like laying on a cloud in heaven. I wake up a little when the quilt is pulled over me and drift right back into the coziness.

"Stay there," Link mumbles a couple hours later when I wake up again to his talking. He's laying down on the other side of the bed on top of the quilt. His face is contorted into confusion and fear. "I'm coming."

I don't want to wake him up after what he did when I woke him up yesterday morning. I touched his arm and he rolled me over before I could realize what was happening and he had a knife to my throat in no time. It's like he has a kill reflex.

"No...just stay there!" he says louder this time.

"Link?" His restless face softens again and he stops talking. I watch him for a while and he stays asleep. He says he has nightmares like me. Maybe we're not as different as I'd originally thought.