Out-Voiced (BotW fanfic) (on permanent hiatus)

7 - Link

The journey to the Woodland Stable had both begun and ended in silence.

Somewhere in the middle, though, Zelda had blabbered on about researching the guardians and figuring out her sealing curse—er... sealing power. She meant power.

Her special gift from the goddess...

She had waved her hands with an hollow sort of fervor, emphasizing the unintentional sarcasm in her tone.

Her lips were turned into a smile, but something about it felt... sad.

All Link could do was sit and listen as she rambled, doing her best to avoid a slip of the tongue—to avoid freeing her disdain for the goddess.

With an exasperated sigh, her shoulders slumped forward a bit. "Sometimes I wish the royal blood didn't carry this stupid 'gift.'"

All Link could do was nod—how else could he respond to that?

What was the right way to respond to a person in distress, which Zelda so obviously was?

He wasn't dense. He could see it in her expressions, in her gestures... The way she carried herself.

A standoffishness meant to conceal the truth.

He could tell.

The perception of him that most people had was that he was blind to emotion; some sort of inhuman being...

But he knew what it meant to feel things.

He'd always known.

In fact, he knew better than most... Having to study emotion in order to hide them.

Having to learn how each emotion feels...

A dark feeling in his chest had him clenching his jaw, attempting to relinquish the memories of his trainee days...

He was nothing more than a child, then... A child, learning to take commands...

He shut his eyes to shut the memories up, only to be shrouded by even darker ones.

"-nk. Link!"

He opened his eyes, recognizing Zelda's voice.

Her voice cleared the darkness in his heart as though it were only a temporary fog, a certain fluttering and lightness possessing him.

"Good. It appears you've returned to reality. Aren't you supposed to be alert to your surroundings?"

He only nodded, trying to keep the smile from spreading across his face.

The feeling was familiar.

He had felt it only once before, back during his days as a trainee...

But he forced the feeling back, not allowing it to manipulate the relationship he was meant to have with the princess—he was her knight, and that was the end of it.

The realization brought him no relief, but it had cleared his mind regardless.

Nightfall brought them to the Woodland Stable.

He was only relieved once he spotted the warm orange glow of a crackling fire, the sort that most stables had outside.

The horse-like... thing... sitting upon the structure brought a nervous chuckle from Zelda; it didn't look to be very stable, she had said.

Then she laughed again, realizing that she had accidentally made a joke.

"It doesn't look very stable, sitting atop a stable."

Link looked at her with a gentle look, and he did his best to refrain from smiling at the sound of her contagious laughter.

Link had never thought Zelda to be the sort to appreciate a good pun... But this proved otherwise.

He had always known there was more to the research-obsessed girl, after all...

The weight on her shoulders only prevented most people from seeing it.

The night was fairly young, and Link spent his time teaching her stances.

By the time they'd finished for the night, the stars were so bright... There were thousands of them lighting the sky, and the moon...

Link glanced at Zelda, almost pausing when he noticed the way the light shone on her face.

She looked... Calm for the first time in two days.

Sweaty, but calm.

The sort of calm that's pensive and sorrowful... A sad kind of calm, but calm nonetheless.

The last two days had been a flurry of anger, of constant alertness, of emptiness...

It wasn't a broken expression she wore; being broken wasn't being calm. Being broken was being broken—that's all there was to it.

Zelda looked calm, standing there in the light of the stars and the moon.

"We should turn in for the night," Link has stated, breaking Zelda from her trance. "Exhaustion is the last thing we need. We have to get to Foothill Stable by the end of tomorrow, if we want to get this trip done and over with."

"Right..."

Suddenly, the calm was gone. Her face scrunched up in irritation, she stared at Link for a few moments.

He thought he heard her mutter something about vengeance and justice before the two of them turned in for the night.