Playing With Knives- LoZ

scene 86- h## #####e#

"Wind? Is everything alright?"
"Go away."
"Only if you tell me what's wrong."
"Whaddya think, dumbass? What would be bothering me? The f**king trees?"
"Wind!"
"Leave me alone."
"Fine."

Twilight walked back over to the table, looking both concerned and annoyed at the same time.
"Well?"
"I don't know. He did this last time, too."
"Oh. What do you mean by that?"
"I mean that he didn't want to do anything."

Zelda recognized this from something. Maybe she had read about it.
"Elaborate. Please," she added.
Twilight sat down and rubbed his forehead with his fingers.
"Well, at first, he just sat around looking like he had seen a ghost and he kept saying that it was just a dream and shit like that, which he did last night, and now he's cursing at me. Again."
"Ah. I think I read about something like that once..."
She thought for a minute before exclaiming,
"Oh! I remember now. He's grieving."
"But we all know that we can bring him back. We just need fairies."
"It's a natural reaction. And I can get fairies if you don't have any."

A few of the others looked at her weird.
"You can just get fairies?"
"Uh, yes. Great Fairy Fountains."
"Well, yeah, but those are hard to come by."
"I know exactly where all of them are. I just need a map. And Link's Sheikah slate has one. I can teleport to them with that."

"Wait, it's his?"
"Of course. What do you mean by that?"
"He always refers to it as "the" slate or "Zelda's" slate."
"What? It's not mine."
"He does the same thing with the Master sword and his tunic. But mostly with the slate thing."
"That's... odd. All of those things are definitely his."

One of them laughed a little.
"Remember the time Wind said that Wild's Zelda was stupid and he nearly killed him?"
"Ha! Good times."
"What do you mean by his Zelda?"

All of them looked at her, and the one who said that rubbed the back of his neck. Odd. That was something Link did.
Twilight smiled awkwardly and said,
"Um, I think he just misspoke. It's nothing you need to worry about."
She raised an eyebrow suspiciously and said,
"If you insist. Another thing, did you say that he nearly killed someone?"

"Uh, well, that was a bit of an exaggeration."
"Not by much!"

She leaned forward a little.
"What did he do?"
"He held sword out like this-"
"Here, I'll show you what happened."
"You didn't see it."
"Yeah, and neither did you. We were all asleep. Anyway, Wind said that something you did was stupid, and Wild was like, "Say that again, asshole." And-"
"Did he really say that?"
"Yes! Wind told me. Quit interrupting me."
"I only did it once."
"Anyway, Wind grabbed his sword-"
"That did not happen. Twi, did that happen?"

Twilight shook his head, smiling.
"Nope. Looks like Wind exaggerated it a bit. I'll finish. So, Wind was getting upset, and Wild realized what he was doing, so he stopped and apologized. It really wasn't that exciting. He just took it a little too personally."

Zelda nodded, smiling.
"That makes sense. He just wants to protect me. Even if I'm not there."

●●●

Someone was watching them. He could feel it. He looked around, his hand already on the hilt of his sword.
He saw something red behind a tree. He drew his sword, preparing for trouble.
Then, there was a flash of red. The Yiga had left. Hopefully.

~~~

Someone was there.
Again?
Really?

He turned to the Yiga sneaking behind him, and they jumped in surprise. He ran at them with his sword out, and they held their sickle out in front of them, looking away. He knocked the weapon out of their hands and they ran off.

What a coward. He almost pitied them They couldn't even do their job right.
Unlike him. Protecting the princess was one thing he could do right. One of the only things, really. The only thing he consistently did well.

●●●

"Well, I should get going now. I'll come back with some fairies. I just have to push the sword into the ground, correct?"
Twilight nodded.
"Alright. I'll take his things with me. He... won't need them."

The real reason was that she didn't want him doing anything stupid. Well, stupid meaning hurting himself.

"Goodbye. I'll be back soon."

She took Link's bags and his sword and pushed it into the ground, smiling.

When she appeared back where she had found him, she sighed. She was alone now. What a relief. She wasn't a huge fan of being formal like that. Well, she wasn't used to it. It was fine.

The blood was still on the rocks. It was only barely dried. And it appeared to be afternoon. She could have sworn that it had been morning when she left that other place. Something was odd about that place. She didn't recognize it at all.

And, to add to the weirdness of it, now that she thought about it, none of those people looked like anyone else that she had seen. The child especially. He was definitely not from around here. Although, he could be from Lurelin Village. That would make sense. Some of them didn't even look like normal Hylians.

Another thing was the way they were dressed. Time, for instance, had a complete set of armor that looked nothing like any that she had seen before. And that was only one of the weird things that she noticed.

There were several other things, like their accents, how they acted, how casual they were towards her even though they knew and acknowledged that she was the princess. She didn't mind that, she just thought it was odd.

But that didn't change the fact that they were a good group for Link to spend time with. In fact, it might be better for her to leave him with them, and not being him back to Castle Town. She'd be too busy to give him the attention and help that he needed. And she didn't trust herself.

Anyway, she wasn't who he needed. Even if she tried to help, she'd just mess up.

He could do fine without her. She wasn't important to him. Not emotionally, at least. And even if he did, that was just his job.

So he didn't need her.

She wiped her eyes with the palm of her hand and found a Great Fairy Fountain on the Sheikah slate.
And she left.