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Reunions are supposed to be joyful, peaceful—but Link is angry.
Or, at least, he believes anger to be the correct word for this feeling, flickering and clawing at the underside of his chest, making him feel desperate and powerless as he pushes Zelda down into the mattress, kneeling over her and trying to steady his breathing. Usually, and even after six years, he would be too cautious and shy to be this assertive with her, but he barely feels in control of himself. He tugs at her dress, whining in frustration when he can’t figure out how to get the complicated garment off.
She sits up, eyes sparkling and a playful smile teasing her lips as she shows him how to undo the back of her gown. His hands are shaking so badly he can barely manage it, pressing blind kisses into the side of her neck as he struggles with the fabric. She laughs, although he doesn’t understand what’s funny, and leans forward to reach around and untuck the fabric herself.
It’s then that he sees them, the red marks that run down her bare spine, perfectly spaced as crystals would be. She turns around to kiss him, and he catches her shoulder and lays her back against the pillows.
“Do they hurt?” he asks with his other hand on her cheek. “Will it hurt if we do it like this?”
“Does what hurt?” she asks, tilting her head, and he kisses her deeply in response.
“Nevermind.”
Clearly, she doesn’t know that the marks are there, and she seems to be in perfect physical health despite what had happened to her, what she had done to herself. He’s confused— confused and angry. This whole thing feels senseless. This whole thing should be impossible. He kisses her like he’s trying to drown in her. She runs her hands down his bare, scarred stomach and up his clothed thighs.
The ache in his chest is so sharp he barely acknowledges what’s happening between his legs, but when his hips brush against hers she gasps. He could choke and die on the sound.
She reaches for his waistline but he pushes her hands away, finding comfort in the harsh sound the leather of his belt makes as he tears it off his waist, finding solidarity in the way the metal clangs against the floor as he throws it aside. The fabric of his trousers is close to tearing beneath his fingers. Zelda’s eyes go wide.
“Link?” she asks, almost concerned, but when he envelops her in a kiss she reciprocates gladly. He touches the softness of her chest and sighs in relief. Contrary to outward appearance, lust is the furthest thing from his mind.
He can remember cold scales and cutting wind, a silent, serpentine body covered in reflective crystals and matted fur that smelled like rain, the rain that fell through the collapsing roof of ancient temples suffocating in moss and weeds. Where she was silent before she now pleads and whispers his name, one hand over her heart as the other searches between her thighs. He nudges it away with his own, kisses her cheek and smiles against her skin when she whines and leans into his touch.
The truth is he likes feeling her vulnerable, he takes pride in bringing out the mix of nervous uncertainty and absolute trust in her eyes. It makes him feel worthy. It makes him feel wanted. He grazes his hand along her cheek and jaw and kisses her, asking her again for permission with his thumb pressed to the pulse point at her throat.
“Yes, prove to me that I am home,” she whispers, and that’s all he needs to hear.
He sinks deep into her, into the warmth and softness of her, pressing kisses to the delicate tendons of her exposed neck and the intricate bones of her chest. He’s crying, he can feel the tears sliding down his cheeks and pooling on her skin. His pleasure throbs in the back of his head like a building headache, dull and secondary. First is the clawing need to curl up inside her ribcage and let her beating heart crush him, to remind her she’s human in the most tangible way he can think of. He needs to be inside of her. He needs to be with her. He needs her, and he always has, and the terror of losing her crashes over him all at once, the grief he never allowed himself to feel because the possibility of failure was too terrifying to manage. If he had ever acknowledged his fear it would have killed him, he is sure of it. It would have taken him either willingly or unwillingly—maybe distracted or distraught, or worse, eager, and perhaps even welcoming. He is so afraid, to admit he was so afraid.
“Link,” she says, and he feels her hands in his hair, gentle and loving, reassuring. He’s trembling so hard that he can’t continue and he collapses on top of her, nose buried in her shoulder.
“Link,” she says again, and he can feel his sobbing through his whole body. “Are you alright?”
He opens his mouth to say that everything is fine, that he's only just realized that loves her more than he could have ever imagined but what comes out is a sob, broken and cracked and barely recognizable. Luckily, she’s always been good at understanding him.
“You missed me?” she guesses, and he nods, and she smiles, tipping her cheek against his forehead. “That’s alright. I missed you too. Dearly.”
He sobs harder, because sure, he’s sure she missed him but if she's still smiling then she doesn’t understand. She doesn't understand what it was like for him to watch her bind her own wrists, gag her own mouth and offer herself up to fate. He doesn’t think she yet comprehends the violence of it, of what she had done to herself, and she probably won’t for quite a long time. Love is best understood through grief, she had once told him (the ceremonial gown still clung tight to his bloodstains after the calamity, which is one of the many reasons that she had burned it) but in his case it was only once his love was returned to him that he understood the true nature of his grief.
It had been his fault; he had failed to catch her. At the same time, though, he had made his feelings on the sword clear when he had (assumed he) left it to decay in the gloom. The rest had been her decision, which he tries to respect but the truth is if he had known what that glowing orb of light had meant, if he had known what she was going to do with the blade once he passed it through to her, he would have never let go of the hilt.
He had heard her say that she believed the reason she had been sent to the past was to restore the sword, to offer herself up to be carved open on an alter in the sky. He understands why she had thought that way, and he respects her courage, but he burns with the injustice of it, with the brutality of it, the finality of it. It made him feel awful and pathetic and powerless, and he was only a spectator. He cannot imagine what it was like for her, the human soul who had torn herself apart willingly to become a shrapnel of divinity, a fragment of the same invisible weapon he had watched her bleed upon again and again and again, back when she was a sixteen-year-old shivering and mumbling in the water. The water had been red, and so had the sky; he had seen it. He shutters against her.
She’s stroking his cheek, and his back, and he doesn’t realize he’s started moving again until he hears her moan, low and soft and sweet. She closes her eyes, permitting herself to sink into the moment, and he does his best to follow her.
Later he will heat water for her and help her bathe, and brush her hair and braid it as she likes, cook her a plate of everything she loves and listen to every story about her adventures. He will hold her in this same bed and be as gentle and kind and patient with her as has always come naturally to him. He will ask again about the marks on her back and what it felt like as the stone scraped down her throat. And he will try to talk about his feelings too, since he knows that she will want him to, so he will try his best for her.
For now, though, words are hard and she is soft, and warm, and here. It’s impossible not to want to lose himself in her.
His vision is fuzzy at best and his thoughts are much worse, but he’s certain that his charged emotions are seeping into his approach by the way she gasps and trembles, the way she clings onto him. The bed frame creaks. He threads his hand beneath her bent knee and runs his tongue along her slack jaw.
The softness and warmth between her soaked thighs and the sweet, eager whines that grace her lips tell him that even if she doesn’t understand his sorrow, she embraces it. Even if she doesn’t understand his apology, she accepts it. She accepts him, hands tangled in his hair and one leg folded around his waist.
“I love you,” he murmurs over and over again, until his voice goes horse and the words become a jumbled mess. “I love you.”
She must sense something, because she says "I'm sorry," teary-eyed, and he doesn’t know if she means what he thinks she means but it’s still enough for him. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he presses his lips into the side of her neck, sucking a gentle mark into the skin. He doesn’t want it to hurt, but he does want it to bruise. He has the same intention with his hand on the soft curve of her hip. Shed of scales her skin is soft again, pliant and delicate, and the feeling of it reaches a place inside him that he never thought he’d uncover, something dark and selfish and untamed. Based on the way she digs her fingernails into his back and worries her teeth along his shoulder, she feels the same way.
He takes pride in how well he knows her, and comfort in the evidence that he still remembers how to please her despite their long time apart. He waits until her cries become so loud, until she’s so lost in pleasure that he’s sure she can’t hear him. He doesn’t need her to hear him, he thinks, but he does need to say it.
“I forgive you,” he murmurs, with a final push that he’s sure will tip her over the edge, and when it does he wraps himself around her, buries his face in her neck and carves out what remains of his heart, letting go of the anger and guilt and heartbreak and opening up space for peace to envelop him at last.
"I forgive you."