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A sword through the torso. Armor broken, speared through as he gasps for breath around sharp metal.
It’s warm around his middle, wet on his lips when his lungs catch and he coughs enough to bite his tongue. Teeth finding cheek and tasting more copper for it just so everything stops jarring on his raw pieces.
He needs an elixir. Needs to remove the blade, to patch the wound, to stand up and move, but he… he doesn’t want to. Hands icy at their tips, growing colder by the second, and he breathes and coughs and lets it happen because… because he doesn’t care anymore.
“I will die.” The thought loud, final, but it doesn’t fill him with the fear it usually did.
Is this what peace felt like? An ending, finally, after so long, and to be grateful as he steps towards it.
Time spent in effort, in blood, in everything he loves and for what?
Even the Chosen get tired, and isn’t he allowed to rest?
Link will never spurn his spot as Courage, forever grateful for this life, lives, and all he has done with them, but even acolytes get tired.
And, “I’m ready.” Spoken only to himself in the privacy of his mind. Never said for he knew the devastation such words would cause.
But this was his choice, now. His want.
The pain was white hot before, clouding his eyes with that familiar haze, stuffing his head full of cotton, but now he can’t feel much of anything. One blink, then two, he looks down and sees the sword buried to hilt in his chest. He’ll die here, but letting each breath come out shorter, slower, quieter isn’t so hard anymore. Doesn’t hurt so much anymore.
Warm turning cold and Link is listing, falling into it until the shuffle of boots fills his vision. Head canted down, slumped over the protrusion and accepting, but he still sees them.
Link is patient if anything, like he’s always been, like the voice that follows isn’t.
“You’re dying,” it rumbled, deep and unmistakable. Heady malice traded for the calm observance of someone who knew they won.
Link blinks, barely there. So close yet so far when the feet shift, one traded for a knee and steady, leathered fingers. They grip his chin, lift his face so his tired eyes have no choice but to look and see and bright, brilliant yellow stares back.
A red crown of fire, hair the color of sunsets and burns with eyes that speak of sunlight and just as hot. Of course its Ganondorf, there to watch his foe bleed and die, to attest to Link’s death in pleasure no doubt.
Of course it’s Ganondorf. It’s his sword that speared Link through, after all. By his hand and will and when Link had lost his own, parried and knocked aside, he knew this end was inevitable.
And now he saw yellow and red and a gentle hand with a face he couldn’t read and it was still okay.
He was ready. This was fine.
Ganondorf could watch, could take pleasure in Link’s torture and that would be fine.
It was fine.
Until it wasn’t.
Until that hand squeezed slightly, pressure prying his heavy eyes back open.
Until unreadable became displeasure became words.
“You’re no good to me dead,” and even acolytes get tired. Worn down, but Ganondorf has no business looking at Link like he wants to trade places. Has no business having bags that dark under his eyes, or sounding for all the world that he’s dissatisfied with his place in it too.
They watch each other, blue and yellow.
The Goddesses may be kind, forgiving. Forever understanding and oh, so beautiful, but they cannot be everything.
And between ocean blue and sun yellow, between Courage and Power, Link realizes he and Ganondorf are one and the same.
Two Chosen whose rest, whose death, were always refused. They are the Goddesses Chosen and dying was never an option. Never permanent no matter how often they fought.
But now Ganondorf is here and Link is so tired and maybe it’s the delirium, maybe it’s the whisper promise longing for death that makes his reason go fuzzy, but looking into those too bright eyes with its warm hand and that familiar longing for closure, for an end written in the edges of his body, well…
Maybe living a little longer wouldn't be so bad.