promptrose

[promptrose]

Maybe something festive with LoZ: RR? Like Link and Hunter explain Hylian/Sheikah traditions to Neesha or something equally as lighthearted? Have an amazing day! c:

Squeaking in under the wire, with an hour left to spare on Christmas day!

So I actually started this short back in 2005.  That’s not a typo.  I have tried almost every year to sit down and finish it, and it’s just never worked out, but here we go!  2020 has been a Hell of a year so far, but at least I finally finished this Very Merry Interlude and can share it! Merry Solstice, Happy Holidays, and whatever you may celebrate, may it have been / be with those you loved best, in spirit if not in person! _________________

It started innocently enough.

In retrospect, that should have been more than enough to tip us off that things were going to get dramatically less innocent as they progressed, since almost nothing that starts with us ends innocently.  But, as they say, hindsight is twenty-twenty, and foresight is not our forte, if you catch my meaning.

“Merry Solstice!” said Hunter.

“Merry Solstice!” said I.

“What’s Solstice?” said Neesha.

And the innocence pretty much ended there.  It’s hard to remember our exact reactions in the face of the grand horror that is Gerudo ignorance to our winter holiday.  I think I might have shouted something about Blasphemy.  I suspect Hunter might have stopped breathing.  I think Neesha might have seen reflected in our horrified expressions the magnitude of the mistake she’d just made and attempted to make a break for it.  The rest is a jumble of chasing her down the stairs until we each had one, flailing arm and had pinned her in a seat.

“Merry Solstice!” said Dad.

“Merry Solstice!” chimed Hunter and I.

“What are you doing to her?” said Bruiser as Neesha tried to kick us both in the head simultaneously and came pretty damn close to doing it.

Now, the thing to understand here is, that for the young and the young at heart, Solstice is only the biggest, most important holiday of the year.  It’s bigger than birthdays, and that’s saying something.  And Hunter and I were both young and young at heart (eighteen going on eight, forever and ever amen).  And we both go a little insane at the holidays.  We get it from Bruiser I think.  He’s a big tough guy for most of the year, but once we start getting close to the Solstice…

As a matter of fact, right at the moment when he was demanding to know what we were doing to Neesha (because somehow, it’s always our fault), Neesha was making a face at the armloads of glittery, sparkly, gloriously tacky stuff both he and Dad carried and evidently trying to figure out what the Hell it was.  Bruiser’s always the first one in the Market to decorate. Claims it’s good for business.  We all know what it’s actually for, but none of us says anything because, as with most softies, Bruiser never reacts well to someone pointing out just how soft he is.

At any rate, the whole point of this is just to say that for my family (and at the time, I was still pretty new to the concept of family) Solstice is the biggest holiday of the year, and the fact that Neesha, who even then was becoming more and more hopelessly embroiled in our little reassembled clan, didn’t know what it was simply couldn’t be allowed.

“She doesn’t know Solstice?!” gasped Bruiser.

“She doesn’t know Solstice,” Hunter confirmed gravely.

“You’re all insane!” said Neesha.

Thus began the introduction of the Gerudo to Solstice – or at least, this Gerudo in particular.  The only Gerudo with the unfortunate luck to have accidentally endeared herself to a family of Solstice-crazy Sheikah.  Unless you count me, but I’m really only half Gerudo.

Solstice Lesson Number One: what is Solstice?  Obviously, Solstice is the one day out of the whole year when everyone is happy and pleasant and generally acting out of positive, community-oriented motives instead of selfish or negative ones.  It’s the day when we all come together to welcome back the sun and say a fond farewell to the winter, in the company of our loved ones and liked ones and sometimes even deeply hated ones.  Solstice is when you give everyone who matters presents, and even a few who don’t. Solstice is when no matter where you go people are singing songs, and throwing snow, and for a brief, shining, wonderful day everyone gets to be eighteen-going-on-eight-forever-and-ever-amen.

Neesha seemed to be under the mistaken assumption that Solstice is merely the shortest day of the year.

“Blasphemy!” said Dad with a wide grin, obviously not taking this seriously enough.

“Can’t…breathe!” gasped Bruiser.

“You are what is wrong with this Kingdom,” Neesha snapped.

We held a family meeting right there to discuss the situation.  It was pointed out that we still had a month to go until the actual Solstice, and that was plenty of time to initiate Neesha into the tradition, Gerudo or no.

“Never happen,” said Dad with a wisdom that can only have come from having married a Gerudo.

“Never say never,” said Hunter and Bruiser.

“Can I go now?” Neesha demanded.

Solstice Lesson One had not gone so well.  Neesha now knew what Solstice was, but somehow our vivid, detailed descriptions had not melted her Gerudo heart and she was torn between laughing in our faces and running very, very far away.  She settled for laughing in our faces, then running to the Palace where the Elite that still insisted on following me everywhere at that time were staying, likely hoping to find some semblance of sanity in the form of ten desert hardened warriors huddled in a pile of thick blankets and clutching hot chocolate mugs like their lives depend on it (all the while cursing the name of the only King in their history to ever drag them into Hyrule in the dead of winter).

And so began Solstice Lesson Two: the decorations.  Anything spangly and sparkly, we told her.  Greens and reds and icy blues and white.  Anything with a snow theme, or a light theme, or a sparkly theme.  It doesn’t matter what it is as long as it’s mostly tactless – things you’d never get away with displaying any other time of year are considered beautiful at Solstice, we told her.  Cover the banisters and doorframes with them.  String them from the roof and along the windows.  Decorate the walls and the cupboards and the stove. Get out the Solstice placemats and cutlery, iron the Solstice curtains, dust off the Solstice ornaments.  Cover every possible inch of space with symbols of merriment and cheer until you’re covered in glitter that won’t come off until spring.

“It’s beautiful,” said Hunter.

“Wonderful,” agreed Dad.

“Why this?” demanded Neesha sourly, staring with deep dismay at her stubbornly sparkling hands.

So Solstice Lesson Two had not had the desired effect.  Apparently, the magic of Solstice, which turns a gaudy, horrible ornament into something beautiful and worthy of envy did not affect Neesha, who looked at our horrible, gaudy ornaments and saw horrible, gaudy ornaments and no amount of protest was going to convince her otherwise.

But there are two traits that run in my family, and the youngest generation (i.e. me and Hunter) have them in spades: stubbornness, and a refusal to accept the Gerudo’s continued insistence that they don’t want to be friends.  And so, the Archery Shop having been glittered and sparkled up (triggering a sudden panic of decorating all over the market, since, after all, Bruiser is the official harbinger of the Solstice season), we moved on to Solstice Lesson Three: the good deeds.

If Solstice is a paragraph, we told Neesha, then the good deeds are the parentheses around it. Perhaps not the most grammatically astute of arguments, but it made sense to us at the time.  There are a variety of reasons for doing good deeds. One of them is to make sure people think of you when they’re making up their presents list, of course, but if this is your only, or even your main reason then perhaps you need to sit back and revaluate your priorities as you’re missing the point of Solstice. The more important reasons include, because it’s nice and it makes you feel good, because it’s part of helping people through the longest night, and because it’s Solstice and that’s just what you do.

So we woke up bright and early (for once in our lives) and dragged Neesha out into the early morning cold.  There are sidewalks that need to be shovelled, we told her.  There are kittens in trees that need to be rescued!  Groceries to be carried!  Horses to be brushed!  Roofs to be cleared!  Wood to be cut!  And little old ladies with an excess of hot chocolate to be shared!

“6 sidewalks, 2 kittens, 14 bags of groceries, 3 horses, 5 roofs, 8 piles of wood, and 15 cups of hot chocolate,” counted Hunter.

“Mmmm…hot chocolate,” I said.

“It seems to me that we are not, in fact, doing good deeds, but other people’s chores,” noted Neesha, hugging her mug instead of drinking it as all Gerudo do.  “Also, I can’t feel my nose.”

And so, Solstice Lesson Number Three met with about as much success as Lessons One and Two, and a good deal more frostbite.  What next, we asked each other?  The answer was obvious.  Solstice Lesson Four: the buying of gifts.

Step one, we told Neesha, you need a list.  Write down everyone you like and everyone you think should receive a present from you. Then you have a friend proof-read it and make sure you haven’t missed anyone (deliberately or otherwise), or added someone you probably shouldn��t have, and also to make sure your list isn’t so long you will be bankrupt by the time all the presents are bought.  So we sat down to write up our lists.

“Zelda, Malon, the Sages, the Generals, Dad, Uncle Bray, Bel, Mel, Thomas,” said Hunter, ticking them off on his fingers.

“Mido, the Know-it-all Brothers, the twins, the Deku Tree Sprout, the Elite, Talon, Ingo, Anju…” I added.

“Well I know who I’m not putting on the list,” said Neesha nastily, and proceeded to write down all those names but leave out mine and Hunter’s.

We exchanged our lists and started proofreading.  We told Neesha that the great thing about Solstice is that you don’t have to get someone a present just because they got you a present.  You only do it if you want to, so it was perfectly fine if she didn’t want to get Hunter and I a present, which took some of the wind out of her sails.  Then Hunter and I argued about whether I was politically obligated to buy presents for the nobles I’d left off my list.

“But Eldrick’s a bastard,” I protested.

“Eldrick is a bastard,” Neesha agreed.

“Eldrick’s a bastard – but you still need to get him a present,” Hunter insisted.

Stage two of the buying of gifts, is, of course, the quest for the perfect gift for everyone on your list. Neesha seemed to brighten considerably at this part, which was cause for tentatively happy suspicion.  Why, we wondered, after being so sullen and cranky about the whole thing up to this point, would Neesha spontaneously decide that perhaps it wasn’t so bad after all?  And then it hit us.

“Did we say ‘acquire’?” Hunter asked dully.

“We meant ‘purchase or otherwise earn through completely legitimate, above board, will-not-get-you-thrown-in-jail means’,” I clarified.

“Well what the Hell’s the point then?!”  Neesha cried, more frustrated than ever.

Undaunted, we dragged her out into the cold once more and we spent the next three days crawling all over the markets and shops of Hyrule, taking the Ocarina if required.  We managed to find the perfect gift for everyone, excluding ourselves of course, that would have to be done in private. We even found the perfect gift for Eldrick: an authentic, gourmet Gerudo snack: dried leevers.

“You think he’ll like ‘em?” I asked with a wicked grin.

“I think if he doesn’t, we can accuse him of being unappreciative of a gift from a foreign dignitary and of offending the Gerudo race on the whole.  Zelda might even have to issue a reprimand and demand a public apology,” Hunter answered, flashing his teeth.

“I thought you wanted to get him something bad,” Neesha pointed out, chewing on one of the leevers and missing the point entirely, which is a thing she does from time to time.

Lessons Number Five through Eight, covering everything from traditional (and less traditional) foods, to traditional (and less traditional) games, to traditional (and less traditional) songs, which turned into an argument that would have turned into a fist fight if it hadn’t been Solstice, over what turned out to be a rather crucial difference in the lyrics of the third verse of a particular song between the Sheikah and the Hylian versions, went roughly as well as you’d expect, based on the success rates of the previous lessons.

I have to admit, that even we, in our indefatigable determination were beginning to think maybe it just wasn’t meant to be.  Maybe the Gerudo were immune to Solstice.  Maybe it was the fact that they didn’t have snow, or their nights tended to be much kinder to them than their days, or they had their own entire culture that had nothing to do with our own and to expect them to place the same value on cultural touchstones from nations they had long been actively excluded from and opposed to and ostracized by was actually rather insensitive of us all around and not entirely within the Solstice spirit.

I mean, if even Hunter and I, the second- and third-most dedicated Solstice adherents (after Bruiser) couldn’t agree on the lyrics to the third verse of an ancient Solstice hymn, what were we doing, really, thinking we had any business pushing it as some kind of universal truth to be inherently understood, even by people who had never once in their lives been part of it?

I’m not gonna lie, this was a depressing line of thought.

“Is it possible we have been engaging in un-Solstice-like behaviour?” wondered Hunter, mournfully.

“To see the end of the longest night one must first survive its darkness,” mourned I, wonderingly.

“Can I go now?” said Neesha, without adverb.

We let her go, because what else could we do at that point.  Then we took ourselves to the pub, because that seemed an appropriate place to attempt to drown our shame, and we did our best, I want that on the record, to stay morose and defeated.  That felt like it would be appropriate.  It’s just between the Solstice food, and the Solstice singing, and the traditional dances, and managing to con one table of rowdies to buy us a drink before the innkeeper caught on and cut us off for being too young for that nonsense (“They’d let us in Kakariko!” Hunter protested.

“They’d let you keep a cow in your house in Kakariko, that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea,” came the response, and neither of us had an answer to that) it was a little difficult to remain sombre.

Still, we thought, as we eventually sang our way back out of the inn and into the snow of the Marketplace, we had done our friend wrong, at Solstice of all times, and that was unacceptable.  We had not approached this the right way at all.  The goal, we agreed, should have been inclusion, not conversion, with the consent of the included.  We just loved her so much, you see, and this celebration is all about loving people enough to share a candle with them through a very long night, and Neesha, more than anybody else in the world, deserved that light from us.  We just focused on the wrong part of it.

And so, contrite, and righted in spirit, and perhaps just a little tipsy, as the shortest day ended and the longest night began, we headed back toward the Archery Shop and its precious, precious candles.  And as we rounded the corner onto our street, we came upon a sight that made us stop and gasp.

The snow-coated street was lit as fiercely as an aurora, and at its epicentre, blazing with all the sparkling, glittering, gaudy beauty of a tacky, tasteless thing that is loved so fiercely it can’t help but shine, was the Archery Shop.  There were people everywhere, candles in their hands, or lanterns, or small, magical flames, that danced and leapt and were passed from hand to hand, wick to wick, like something precious.  Because of course, it was.  The whole town must have been there.  Everyone we had done chores for, a few who had done chores for us.  People I recognized from the palace and the tavern and even the Ranch – I could see Malon and Talon and Ingo, who had made the trip all the way in from Lon Lon.

And more, there were the Sages.  All of them. None of their usual retinue, this was not an official trip, then.  Just a quick visit.  And scattered among the crowd were the Elite.  Amplissa and Aliza, making out in a way that caused me deep concern one of them was about to light the other’s scarf end on fire with her distracted handling of her candle.  Indiga chatting with somebody I didn’t recognize like they were old friends, holding out her own candle to him when a stray snowball caught him in the shoulder and the wet shrapnel put his out.  Bruiser and dad, moving through the crowd with trays full of hot chocolate and cookies and burn salve, Bruiser with a grin as wide as his shoulders, stopping often, chatting and laughing with a voice that filled whatever empty space the noisy crowd had left, knitting it all together tighter.  Dad, shyer, still not used to crowds, still thinking of himself as a stranger here, but smiling kindly at folk and offering them a light from his lantern where one was needed.

And this was supposed to have been a relatively quiet Solstice for us, everyone had been busy with their own celebrations or a general sensible thought that maybe our little reassembled family needed quiet time to just exist for a while on its own, even I had maybe thought that and quiet was not my default mode, but somehow this was better, or not better, really, this was the same thing, just an extension of it, because they were here, these people I loved so much, and these people I liked so much, and these people I didn’t know that well but was already planning to be half in love with before the night was over.  They were all here, and we were all together, and the longest night of the year had nothing at all on that.

“What--?!” managed Hunter.

“I don’t--!” gasped I.

“You guys look so ridiculous right now,” said Neesha, with deep self-satisfaction.

She had done this. After we let her go.  She had gone to the palace and talked to the Gerudo and explained that the holiday was very strange, and had a lot of useless bits around it that she didn’t see the point of, but it mattered a lot to us, and so she thought maybe it would be good for them to come to the Shop and be part of it, because the candle part didn’t sound so bad, and Bruiser had promised food and he was a good cook.  And then Indiga had suggested that maybe they should invite Zelda, since I was determined to be attached to her despite their misgivings.  And Zelda had thought it was a grand idea, even though she still won’t tell me how it was presented to her, and Nayru, Farore and Din would I like to have been a fly on the wall for that conversation, and suggested that she might do some jumping around and collect the Sages if they were free, even just to pop in for a little bit before returning to their own celebrations at home.  And at some point someone must have filled Dad and Bruiser in, because then they figured, well, if we’re having all those folk over, might as well go get the rest and make it A Proper Thing.

A Proper Solstice.

“You said Solstice is about family, so I went and got the rest of the family,” said Neesha.

“Guh,” said I, because I don’t really know how to spell the sound of me bursting into tears.

“Neesha of the Gerudo, you are hereby relieved of any duties relating to anyone’s emotions for the next three weeks for this incredible, amazing, perfect thing that you have done,” said Hunter, patting me gently on the back.

Pleased with this, and herself, Neesha turned to vanish into the crowd.  But then she paused and hesitated, turning back to us briefly: “You’re still gonna give me real presents, though, right?” she asked.  “Like material objects?  Because I wasn’t opposed to that part.  And I don’t even like most of these people, I just made them come for you.”

“Yes.  We do presents at sunrise,” said Hunter gravely.

“Guuuuuuuh,” said I.

“Then Merry Solstice!” said Neesha.

And so, her light, metaphorical and all the more real for that, shared with those she loved best, Neesha’s first Solstice turned out to be my favourite of them all.

#loz rr #link #neesha #hunter #solstice #randombutloved #ask rose

[promptrose]

Are nsfw prompts allowed?

No, sorry.  I wouldn’t be comfortable with that.  But I am pretty confident you would be able to find someone who will somewhere on tumblr with minimal looking.  :)

#admin #Anonymous

[promptrose]

rabbiraccoon asked: I'd really love a drabble or two with Ruto. She's always fascinated me the most

[Redirected this ask from my main blog to here!]

“We could have done this in Zora’s domain, you know,” she says primly, without losing a single degree from the sharpness of the attention she is paying to the cut of the jacket I am wearing.  She reaches out and gently tugs at the bottom of it, pulling it tighter against my shoulders and unbunching it from around my chest.  “Tailors exist in places other than Castletown.”

“We could have,” I agree, “but then you would have also mademe do other things.  Like attend state dinners or listen to speeches or give speeches.”  We both give an involuntary shudder at the image that conjures, so I retract that one immediately.  “Okay, maybe not even you would make me give a speech.”

“I like it when you attend state dinners,” Ruto replies.  She makes a gesture that can – naturally – only be described as imperious and I obediently turn around for her to consider the front of the jacket.  “I know my people seem very prim and proper to you, but there are elapids among us, and it doesn’t hurt for me to remind them every now and then that I count the Hero of Time among my allies.”

“Ruto,” I say, and pull her hand away from my jacket to clasp it between mine.  “It means the world to me that you are upfront with me about the ways in which you wish to use me.  I understand I have difficulty sounding sincere sometimes, but I mean that with every fibre of my being.”  I do, I really do.  “But your state dinners are extremely boring.  I cannot even get up to the usual sorts of trouble at them.  And they are the sort of thing where if I go to one of yours, Zelda will immediately want to know whyn I was willing to do that, and behave myself, but I can’t go to one of hers without getting into a fight.  And there’s no way to explain to her that I try to get into fights at yours, but literally nobody will fight me.  I openly called that guy out that one time and he just looked baffled and kind of wandered away.”

“We,” says Ruto with a hint of national pride, “are not barbarians.  This jacket isn’t working, try the next one.”

“You don’t think it’s the pants?” I ask, not for the first time.

“No, I like the pants,” she replies, also not for the first time.  “Not everything needs to beleggings, Link.  Switch the jacket.”

I turn and the tailor is already there, army of assistants waiting eagerly behind her, arms loaded with alternate options.  “Do you have—”

“No green!” Ruto cuts me off immediately, and there is no way I’m going to get anybody to listen to me with her in the room.  “I told you. We’ll do a flash of it.  A pop.  It’ll stand out more.  Trust me.” I think, once again, of my beloved hat, but resist the anxious urge to ask the question.  Mostly because I know what the answer is going to be.

The tailor and her assistants quickly confer and then produce another jacket.  This one has less frills, which I appreciate, and more colour, which I feel favourably toward.  If I can’t wear my usual stuff, I will at the very least be as loud visually as I am vocally.  I take it from the tailor, ignoring her displeasure that I won’t let her put it on me herself.  “Also,” I say, turning back to Ruto, “Acqul always kind of gets this look on his face when we dance, like, he’s still the nicest person in the world, but also, he’s contemplating the many ways he knowsn how to kill a man in his sleep.”

“Mmm,” says Ruto, and it’s practically a purr.  “I know you’ll have trouble believing this, because he’s unreasonably fond of you and therefore a kitten with you, but he’s one of the elapids I mentioned.”

“I don’t know what that means,” I tell her amiably.

“Poisonous sea snake,” she clarifies.  “They will write books about his rise to general someday if I have to make them do it myself.  It was a thing of strategic, political beauty.”

“Match made in heaven then,” I say, and the smile she gives me is both radiant and positively wicked.

“Anyway, I like spending time with you, Ruto,” I tellher.  “It’s different when you’re Queen of the Zoras and I’m the Hero of Time or the King of the Gerudo or whatever.  I like when we’re just us, and Castletown is one of the only places where we can do that. Because you’re not surrounded by all your royal everything, and everyone here still knows me as the kid from the archery shop.”  I gesture to the outfit I am wearing, which is generally blue themed, and definitely formal, and involves at least three layers of clothing, most of which I don’t know the names for.  “Do you think there is literally anybody else in any of the worlds to which I have access that I would let talk me into a shopping trip and dressing like this?  I don’t even let Zelda do this for me.”

Ruto, naturally, is pleased by this.  “She owes me a thank you card for this one,” she says, giving me her wordless command to spin again.  “This is coming together quite nicely, if I do say so myself.”

“She’ll send you a fruit basket, I’m sure,” I say, and it’smostly not sarcastic.  I frown at my reflection in the mirror – which looks, unfortunately, very good right now – and screw up my courage enough to finally ask, “About my hat, though…”

“Is it your birthday party, or her birthday party?” Ruto asks, with just vicious precision.

Poisonous sea snakes, indeed.

#loz #loz oot #loz rr #link #ruto #she is wrapping him like a gift #a gift to him for all the points and positive attention he will get for dressing nicely for once #and a gift to her for convincing him to dress nicely for once #because she is just that good of a friend #rosezemlya

[promptrose]

Did Hunter ever get around to showing Neesha the Shadow Temple like he said he would in The Return? If so, how'd it go?

“We don’t have to keep doing this,” Hunter said, eyeing his friend closely.

Neesha hesitated, then fixed a fierce frown to her face to bolster her courage and looked him dead in the eyes.  “Are you going to go tell Indiga that?“

"No,” Hunter replied immediately.  "Indiga scares me.“  He was on good terms with most of the Gerudo these days - the elite, anyway, and some of the reds that guarded the main locations he frequented.  Indiga though… Indiga was the type of person who played incredibly complex games with people and he was pretty sure she was smarter than he was and no matter what he was doing he was definitely losing. Since he wasn’t a big fan of losing generally, let alone a game he hadn’t agreed to play and couldn’t be entirely sure was happening, well. 

Amplissa might call him names and make fun of his uniform, but in the world in which Hunter had chosen to exist these days, that was just how friends behaved.

Neesha didn’t bother pretending to disdain him for this.  Indiga scared her too, he was pretty sure, and they had been friends for long enough now that the promise of mutually assured pride-destruction was enough to keep the mocking between them to a minimum on certain, shared fronts - especially when they didn’t have an audience.

"Then I DO have to keep doing this, because Indiga said so.”  She muttered something under her breath he couldn’t entirely make out, but he was pretty sure it had the word ‘diplomat’ in it, and some kind of painfully specific threat against Zelda for having giving her the title. He opted to ignore the threat against the heir to the throne of Hyrule and technically a person he was more or less sworn to defend from that sort of thing.  Not least of which because naming Neesha a Gerudo diplomat had been Hunter’s idea, and he was QUITE content to let Neesha go on blaming someone else for that.

He would take a knife for Zelda.  He felt it was a fair trade that she take an angry Neesha for him.

Mostly anyway.

“Because of the culture thing?” he asked instead.

“Not even hard to understand cultures,” Neesha grumbled in response.  They still hadn’t moved toward the door they were standing in front of.  Hunter decided to let her take her time.  "Hylians are dumb and Sheikah are creepy and Gorons are big and Zoras are fancy. There.  Culture.  I can diplomatize things.“

He felt there was something prophetic in the tone and momentum she used to verb that particular noun, but decided not to comment.  "Big isn’t a cultural trait.”

“Yes it is,” she snapped.  "They’re big and they’re made of rock or something and that makes them think they can go around touching people all the time and hitting them so hard their ears bleed because they’re rocks.  They don’t understand what its like to be soft on the outside.  All their soft is on the inside.“  She made a deeply aggrieved face.  "So much soft on the inside.  They’re worse than Link.”

Hunter considered that and found he was without a counterargument.  Her point was, in its way, entirely valid.  He was sure Link would have appreciated a spirited defence of his softness, but Link wasn’t there, and the Shadow Temple was long, and Neesha wasn’t going to like any of it.  Most people didn’t.  Even the Sheikah didn’t, not really.  It wasn’t that kind of temple.  Best not to pick fights TOO early.

“Sheikah aren’t…” he said, but trailed off for a moment.  Under better circumstances maybe he would have tried to defend his own people against the description “creepy.”  Halfway through the Shadow Temple wasn’t neutral circumstances, let alone better ones, though.  "It wasn’t always this bad,“ he said after a contemplative moment. "I mean, it was never the Temple of Time.  We are who we are and our religion is what it is.  But it wasn’t this …THIS.”  

Since Neesha clearly had no intentions of moving forward yet, he pushed his hands into his pockets and turned to lean up against the wall.  He surveyed the room behind them with blue-green eyes that were seeing instead pictures of things he’d never actually seen for himself.  He’d taken Neesha to some of the worst parts of the temple because he’d thought it would be funny, but now he regretted it.  In the pictures this room had been a proper mausoleum, with the venan arranged in their places, their names and sacrifices carved into the stone, whatever physical blessings had been appropriate for the era pressed into their hands or over their eyes or around their bier.  Now it was a dumping ground; bones piled atop each other, dumped here without ceremony, blessed only with whatever miserable apologies the living had felt comfortable giving them under the circumstances.

“There used to be more of us,” he said finally.  "Too many wars.  Too many battles.  Too many bones and not enough flesh left to care for them.  There just … there used to be more of us.“

Neesha grunted and followed his gaze back out over the bones.  It was a more direct stare than she’d given it previously, more steady. Understanding, rather than nerves moulded her frown.  "There used to be more of us too,” she said.  And unexpectedly, Hunter felt better.

Maybe this diplomat thing was going to work out after all.

“Of course,” Neesha added, “we burn our dead like civilized people, so we don’t have to deal with some giant hole in the ground full of rotting flesh and redeads.”

“Okay,” said Hunter, pushing himself away from the wall with an eye roll worthy of Link. “I feel WAY less bad about showing you the next room now.”

“What?” Neesha demanded, turning to face him again as he reached for the door. “Why?!”

Hunter pushed the door open, listening to it creak ominously as it swung inward to a dark room, and felt a sense of deep satisfaction.  "Because now you deserve it,“ he replied, and shoved her through before she could protest.

He gave the room and its valiant dead a final, respectful bow of his head, and then followed his friend into the darkness, cackling.

#loz rr #hunter #neesha #Anonymous #my posts

[promptrose]

modern!TWR, please!!

She opened the door onto a smile like the sun.

“Hi,” said the woman standing in the hallway, “I’m Lije.”

Oriana blinked once, again, thrice.  Did she know this person?  She didn’t think she did.  The woman was familiar in that vague sort of way that most of the people who lived in the building were familiar, but that was it.  

“Hi,” she finally said.  “Can I help you?”

“Funny you should ask that,” said Lije, pressing her palms together in front of her mouth like she was about to say a prayer.  “Long story short, I’m in a bit of a pickle and I might have, sort of, accidentally put myself in it, and also,” she folded her fingers together and converted the non-prayer into a two-fingered point at Oriana, “I might have, sort of, accidentally dragged you into it, or at least, made it such that you are the only person who can get me out of it without, like, bloodshed or disownment.”

“I am…very busy right now,” Oriana replied.  “So if you could get to the point…?”  She was being rude, but it was very difficult to care.  It was midterms week - two down, three to go and the worst saved for last - and every second she was standing here talking was a second she was not force-feeding her brain more information about the complexities and history and nuances of The Law.  She had very carefully kept her social calendar free for the last two weeks and had therefore not reserved any bandwidth for dealing with unexpected strangers interrupting her studying by standing in the door of her apartment not making sense.  So, in a sense, this “Lije” person had brought it on herself.

“Straight to the point?” Lije replied, the force of her words weakening significantly, as a deep blush spread over light brown cheeks.  “Do I have to?”

Almost too perplexed to be annoyed, Oriana gestured with a chewed-up pen.  “You came to me.”

“Okay,” said Lije, clearly gearing herself up, “well.  You remember, like a month ago, we ran into each other as my mother was dropping me off after a bout?”  The blank look on Oriana’s face said no, but Lije barelled on anyway.  “So, my mum saw us chatting, right?  We were just saying hello and whatever.  Nothing stuff.  But she couldn’t hear that.  And she mentioned it to my dad, and he, like, came to his own conclusions, because he is, just disgustingly optimistic and thinks way too highly of me, because let’s be real, you’re way out of my league, like why does he have this faith in me?  What have I ever done to deserve it?”

“The point,” Oriana cut in before the rant could completely derail.

Lije winced and suddenly found it very important to study the paint on Oriana’s doorframe.  “Well,” she said, “the point is, more or less, give or take, that I might have let them think, like not lied or anything but maybe didn’t correct the misconceptions either, that we were dating.”

Ori stared at her for a long moment.  “You and me.”

“Yes,” said Lije, pretending to be fascinated by an uninteresting sound down the hallway.

Ori narrowed her eyes, calculating the various permutations of this situation to try to derive the conclusion.  “You’re here to ask me to pretend to be your girlfriend when they come to visit you.”

“Yeeeeeeess?” Lije said, studying the stucco in the ceiling.

Approximately three hundred answers sprang immediately to mind.  Oriana sorted them with relentless efficiency, weighing the pros and cons of each, and rejecting or amending them rapid-fire, until she finally said: “Five hundred dollars and not before next week.”

Lije’s eyes instantly reoriented on her face.  “Five hundred dollars?!”  She protested.  “Do I look like I’m made of money?”

“No,” Oriana said matter-of-factly, “you look like you’re desperate.  Five hundred dollars and no hanky-panky.”

Lije sputtered.  “I am offended on so many levels right now I don’t even know where to start!”  She made a face that looked genuinely wounded.  “I never would have assumed hanky-panky, I’m asking you to pretend to date me, not date me.”  Then she looked at Oriana in a way that made her pretty sure the loud woman was debating the merits of pointing out that if Oriana was interested in hanky-panky, however…  She wisely chose not to pursue that avenue of conversation, and instead opted to say: “Fifty bucks and I forget you offended me.”

Oriana started to close the door, but Lije’s hand shot out and held it open.  “A hundred!” she said.  “Come on, man.  You don’t know my parents, okay?  My dad will be so disappointed - he just wants to pretend he’ll get grandkids out of me someday, just help me let him dream!”

Oriana raised an eyebrow, unmoved but intrigued by the omission.  “And your mother?”

Lije’s face fell flat.  “She will be dead for twenty years before I am able to finally live down the shame of having pretended to have a girlfriend.”

Oriana thought about that.  That she could understand.  “Three hundred dollars and I will write you a thoughtful and detailed break up e-mail after they leave that you can show them as you mourn our fake relationship.”

Lije stared at her, eyes narrowed like a man staring down a particularly clever raptor.  “One hundred and fifty,” she said, “and two VIP, front-row tickets to my next match.”

“Match?” said Oriana.

“MMA,” Lije clarified.  “A fight.  It’s Friday night, take your real girlfriend if you like.  Make it a date.”

Oriana raised an eyebrow and gave the woman another look.  She should have seen it earlier.  Her knuckles were scarred and there was just the faintest yellow tinge around one of her eyes, the ghost of an old bruise.

Something in the back of her mind stirred; a half-sorted memory that she couldn’t be 100% certain of.

“One moment,” she said, and closed the door on Lije.

She moved over to the couch where she’d left her phone.  Two flicks and a tap, and then she sat and listened to the phone ring on the other end.  Her mother picked it up on the third ring.

“Hello, Thana,” she said.  “I have a quick question for you if you have a moment.  That charming step-daughter of yours, what was that sport she was into again?  I’m not being mean, I called her charming.  Well are you implying she’s not?  I know.  I know!  Listen!  I’m trying to do what you want, okay?  You want us to bond?  Fine!  Tell me the name of her stupid sport!”

She huffed and waited, listening as her mother had a muffled conversation with another person before coming back to the phone and confirming that it was, in fact, MMA.

“Okay, and her favourite fighter?  That wouldn’t have been some woman named Lije, would it?”  Another muffled conversation and then affirmation.  “Perfect.  That’s all I needed!  No, I’m not plotting– why would you assume that?  Thana, she’s a child, I’m not going to plot against a teenager.  I have better things to do with my time, thank you very much.  I’m going to be nice to her, oh my God!  Fine.  Fine.  Love you too.”

She hung up the phone and threw it back on the couch, rolling her eyes dramatically at the back of it.  That done, she carefully schooled her face back into neutrality and returned to the door.

Lije was still waiting outside it, leaning against the door opposite Oriana’s and chewing absently on a nail.  She straightened hopefully when the door opened.

“One hundred fifty dollars,” Oriana said.  “The two tickets.  And my step-sister gets to meet you after the fight.”

The sun came on again in Lije’s face.  “Hey,” she said, “if I’m still conscious at that point, I’ll do a jig for her if you want!”  She thrust her hand forward and they shook on it.

They exchanged numbers and Lije took the manifold hints available to her and left.  Oriana closed the door after her and shook her head.  

“Weirdo,” she said, but she was smiling.

#warden's return #twr #twr au #Been thinking about this au all day #Anonymous

[promptrose]

I'm playing through OOT again and as I go through Gerudo Fortress, all I can think about is how this would've gone down in your story and how your Gerudo would have reacted to all that was going on. I would LOVE to see your version of Link's infiltration into the fortress and how all your Gerudo dealt with it all. Your stories are literally all I can think about when I play Zelda now!

A chorus of cheers and groans erupted from the gatheredwomen as Amplissa slid into the guard room so fast she nearly tripped. Rightingherself, she looked straight at Danoki and raised her hands in a gestureconveying both triumph and fuck you.

Aliza didn’t bother hiding her smug pride as she made therequisite marks on her board. “Nine minutes, thirty three seconds,” she said.“That puts Amplissa in first and knocks the rest of you down a rank.”

Danoki made a dismissive noise. “He’s getting tired. That’sall.”

“He is not,” Amplissa paused in the act of taking her hairdown to brush it through with her fingers, offence writ large on her face. “Youshould have seen the little sand eater run when I caught him. Half my time wasjust trying to catch up to him.”

“You think he’s up for another round?” Indiga asked, leaningover Aliza’s shoulders to study the leader board in her hands.

She ran over his flight in her mind, double checking it forsigns of fatigue. She didn’t see them. She had, in fact, never seen someone sodetermined to get away, and so uncaring of the odds of that happening. Hedidn’t seem to ever hold anything in reserve. Maybe he’d be better at sneakingif he did. Even after she’d caught him - and she was the sixth woman to do so -he’d fought her the whole way back to his cell, yelling about his destiny andthe goddesses and other nonsense. Screaming about being the Hero of Limes orsomething. Maybe that explained his clothes.

Even remembering his tirade she rolled her eyes. What did aboy know about goddesses anyway?

“Oh he’s up for it,” she said, not noticing Aliza’s frantichead shaking until it was far too late to stop herself, “just give him fifteento get his breath...back.” Aliza’s face flattened into something that promisedpunishment later and Amplissa winced and immediately looked up at Indiga. “Whydo you care? I thought you said this was a stupid game we shouldn’t beplaying.”

“I did,” Indiga replied, straightening, “and it is.” But shereached into her pocket and threw her rupees on the table. “But I’ve got theright to participate anyway, don’t I?” She arched an eyebrow down at Aliza, whogrumbled a confirmation as she added Indiga’s name to the list.

The room exploded with women wanting to change their bets,but Indiga cut through this with a shout. “Let the bets stand,” she said,glancing at Aliza. “I joined too late to be considered when they were placed,so no bets. Fair?”

Aliza, who had at least three hundred rupees riding onAmplissa, was all too happy to agree that that was only fair (causing Amplissato frown, because even if they all knew Indiga would win this, hands down,shouldn’t a yellow mark have more faith?). “We’ll establish a second pot,” shesaid. “Closest to guessing Indiga’s time without going over wins it.”

The room descended into hasty discussion as women countedtheir coin and debated the merits of one bet over another. Amplissa was halfwayto reaching for her coinpurse when Aliza caught her eye. She shook her head andglanced sideways at Indiga, who had taken a seat to wait for the timer tostart. Amplissa frowned back, but Aliza’s expression was firm. She didn’t wanther to bet. Her eyes slid back over to Indiga. The woman’s expression was asunreadable as ever, a layer of cynicism and dry amusement covering dark anddangerous depths.

But Aliza knew her better.

And Indiga had been really against this bet at thestart...

Uncertain suddenly, Amplissa pulled her hand from her pouchand leaned back in her chair. Aliza nodded and turned back to the other womento begin recording their bets.

Indiga didn’t seem to notice any of this. Her eyes werestaring at something beyond them.

 ***

 Amplissa found her, days later,standing on the ramparts of the wall and looking out over the desert with thesame distant eyes. She was surprised, but didn’t say anything as she moved tostand beside her. For a while they watched the sun setting over the spiritwastes, setting them ablaze in the twilight.

“People talk,” Amplissa said finally. “It doesn’t meananything.”

The corner of Indiga’s mouth slid up into her usual smile,but there was more bitterness than bite in it this time. “And what do theysay?”

Amplissa shifted her weight, frowning. “You know what theysay. That you let him go.”

“They’re wrong.”

Amplissa nodded. “I know, that’s why I--”

“It was nothing so passive as that.”

Amplissa’s voice died in her throat. It took her a moment toget it working again. “What are you saying, Indiga?”

“I herded him towards the other Hylians. And I sounded noalarm when he let them out.”

“Indiga, why--”

“When they were free I went to him. I used that stupid storythe Hylians tell. About how to join us. I gave him my token. I told him whatwords to use with the gate guards to convince them he was one of my agents.”Her face tightened. “I regret that, now. I didn’t realize how that wouldlook... I didn’t mean to get them caught up in it.”

Amplissa couldn’t keep the horror from her face. “Indiga.That’s treason. If anyone finds out--!” She cut herself off. Someone hadfound out. She had. Because Indiga had told her. She should... sheshould report it. She should arrest her right now.

Shouldn’t she?

Amplissa waved this point off as unimportant. “My work withthe eyes means I’ve travelled more than you. The boy is something the Hylianstalk about a lot. Their mythical Hero. That pretty sword of his can do thingsthat ours can’t, no matter how clumsy he may be with it. And he’s not the onlyperson in those myths, Amplissa.” Amplissa wasn’t sure if it was the settingsun or something else flashing in Indiga’s eyes. “He’s just the one who wins inthem.”

“Indiga...” Amplissa found she didn’t have anything to say.Too little of this made sense to her. Indiga was telling her somethingimportant, but she lacked the context to understand it. She wished,desperately, that Aliza had been on guard duty with her tonight. She was alwaysbetter at this stuff.

“Naboorus is out there,” Indiga said, her voice quiet andfierce. She was looking at the spirit wastes again. “She’s been gone too long.He’s done something to her and no matter how many ways I look at it, there’snothing we can do about it. Our place is here. Our role is here. But I can’t...I couldn’t stand the thought of leaving her without back up, Amplissa.Not Nabooru.” Her mouth was a grim, hard line. “The King is the King, butsisters are sisters and I won’t have it. Not after everything.”

There, at last, was something that made the pieces, at leasta few of them, start to fit. “You sent her help.”

“I did,” Indiga replied. “And no oaths broken.” Nottechnically, anyway. Others would disagree. But Indiga had long lived andbreathed in the gaps between the technicalities.

“Why are you telling me this?” Amplissa asked after a longmoment in which neither said anything.

Indiga frowned at the moon, low in the sky, but climbinghigher. “Because I have seen what lying to your sisters about a wrong thingdone for right reasons does to a woman. And because I carry too many secretsalready, Amplissa. I decided I don’t want the burden of another. You and Alizaare more dear to me than I think you know. I... wanted to tell you. You cantell her. And then the two of you do what you need to with the information.”

“I’m not telling Aliza,” Amplissa said, scandalized by thethought. “She’ll rat you out and break her own heart doing it, are you kiddingme?”

Indiga glanced at her from the corner of her eye and offeredher a rare, warm smile. “Wiser than you let on, aren’t you?”

Amplissa snorted and didn’t reply.

“You’d have been an elite by now, you know,” Indiga said.“In another time. Under any other Son.”

Amplissa shrugged like this was nothing, though the wordsmeant a lot, even if the truth was bitter. “If I wore the white, he’d just getit dirty.” She was surprised by the force of this belief in her own heart. Shehadn’t ever expressed it before. It was dangerous, these days, to do so.

“Truth,” said Indiga, the moonlight shining against her ownwhite uniform.

They stood together for a long time after, watching thedesert for threats, even thought they both knew they were looking in the wrongdirection. Sooner or later the moon hit its zenith, and Amplissa turned to walkaway.

Indiga said nothing, but she turned to look, something ofher anxiety showing on her face - whether this was a deliberate slip in themask or not, Amplissa couldn’t say. Aliza really was better at that sort of thingthan she was. But she understand the unasked question.

“My shift is over,” she said. “I thought I might go offer aprayer.”

“For what?”

The smile Amplissa flashed her in the dark was fierce andpredatory and full of the anger Indiga knew boiled underneath the youngerwoman’s brashness. “For the boy to fly as fast as though I was chasing himagain.”

And deep in the grip of the spirit wastes, the boy ran.

#loz rr #Anonymous

[promptrose]

Who would take care of a baby better--Link or Zelda? Which one would lose all patience first?

Standard caveat this is an AU that assumes that the events of Reconciliations to date have happened, but makes no assumptions about anything that happens after what’s currently been covered (i.e., some or all of this could be rendered moot by the events of RR to come :)  ).

________________________

“I don’t know what it wants.” She held it, like they had shown her, and patted its back, like they had shown her, and still it cried, which, to be fair, they had warned her it might, but that seemed really insufficient now that she was thinking about it, and had been thinking about it for at least three hundred years or since thirty minutes ago when it had started screaming like she was killing it, it was hard to say, time had gone liminal on her. Like she imagined it would in Hell.

Oh wait. She didn’t have to imagine. She had been there, and she was wrong, this wasn’t like Hell at all, it was worse.

“She’s not an ‘it’,” Link said, wearing a patience that was still so alien on him and only seemed to apply in this one area of his life, “she’s a she. But I recognize that that’s not what you need to hear right now, so I’m just going to take her, and you’re going to take several deep breaths, okay?”

He moved over, tossing a baby blanket over his shoulder like it was the most natural motion in the world and held out his hands. Zelda tried to resist, she really did - it felt like failure. It felt like admitting she couldn’t do it. It felt like not being good at something the first time, and she hated that. But it - she - was so loud and right in her ear and she could feel her sanity bleeding through her eardrums, and she really did love the stupid, ugly, screeching thing, she was sure she did, and at least throwing it out a window would be frowned upon, was sure there used to be a time when she would frown upon something like that, so she relented faster than she liked and handed it - her - over.

She could not decide if she was relieved or not that it didn’t stop screaming when Link took it.

He made soft, cooing noises at it. “Okay,” he kept saying. He was bouncing it too. His technique was fine as far as she could tell, but the baby wasn’t responding. “Okay, I know. Life is hard. Sucks to be you, you’re stuck here now. Just got accept it baby girl.” This prompted a particularly shrill squawk and he winced, but laughed. “Oh, well excuse me, Princess.”

“What does she want?” Zelda whispered, almost to herself. “Why won’t she stop?”

Link shrugged. “Babies are people,” he said, moving over to the couch to lay down on it with the screaming infant on his chest. “People forget that. Most of the time they want simple things, but sometimes they realize something they don’t have the words to explain. Maybe she got a glimpse out the window and realized how much bigger the world is than she thought and it scared her. Maybe she’s got a headache. Maybe she just comprehended the concept of mortality. We’ll never know. Our job is just to comfort her through it at this point.”

Zelda resisted the urge to put her hands over her ears as the baby continued to cry. She resisted the urge to flee the room. She did not resist the urge to join the baby, and burst into tears, causing Link to sit up so fast he almost dropped the little howling thing onto the floor. The movement startled her so bad the baby actually, briefly, stopped crying, and then started crying harder.

Link stared back and forth, from one to the other, and then ran to the door to find help.

***

Thirty minutes later it was he and Zelda curled up on the couch. The baby was still crying somewhere probably. Or maybe not. Who knew? Shouldn’t she know? She should probably know if her baby was still crying, right? That was a thing mother’s knew. Didn’t they?

It had taken her longer than she wanted to admit to regain control of herself. Now she stayed where she was because it was easier than turning around to face him. Embarrassment didn’t begin to describe it.

“You want to talk about it,” Link murmured softly from behind her, running his thumb against the back of her hand, “or you want me to guess?”

“It’s just stress,” Zelda replied. “Stress and no sleep. She eats like you, I can’t stay in bed long enough to sleep right now.”

“No offence, Zelda,” he said, “but that’s bullshit and you know it. When have you ever gotten enough sleep? And when have you ever not been stressed?”

“This is different.” She said it so softly she wasn’t sure he’d heard her and she couldn’t bring herself to repeat it.

“How?” he asked after a long moment. “After everything you’d done, all the amazing things you’ve accomplished…tell me how it’s different?”

She didn’t reply. Partly because she didn’t want to admit anything, and partly because he didn’t sound like he was in a place to understand that just because something came easy to him didn’t make it that way for everyone, and partly because when she thought about trying her throat constricted and her eyes started burning again.

She extricated herself from his arms and left the room. Thankfully, he let her go.

***

He found her, much later, sitting on the hill behind her parents’ mausoleum. She sensed him there, watching, and waited to see what he’d do. He didn’t approach right away, looking, instead, at the statues and the carvings around the grand tomb, looking at her sitting in its shadow, and thinking. He didn’t get enough credit for that, sometimes. He could be more thoughtful than people knew (his own fault, most of the time, preferring, as he did, the Path of Action, but still. When it counted).

Eventually he climbed the hill and came to sit beside her. He reached into his pouch and pulled out a bottle of what she guessed was wine he’d stolen from the kitchen.

She glanced at it, then raised an eyebrow at him. “What, no glasses?”

“Glasses are for classy people, which I am not,” he said. She shook her head, but smiled despite herself. “I think I owe you an apology.”

She watched him struggle with the cork for a minute and then said: “For what?”

“For not realizing sooner,” he said as she took the bottle from him, “what the problem is.”

Part of her wanted to make him say it, in case he didn’t really know. To not give anything away. To keep her secrets close and veiled. But as the cork came free, so did the truth. “I’m scared,” she said.

He watched her take a drink from the unwieldy bottle and nodded to himself as she handed it over to him. “I remember,” he said, taking his own drink, “when we first started actually dating. Like, publicly. You spent the whole month calling me ‘Hero’ and…I mean, I don’t remember all the titles, but those. Calling me all of those. It was like a game trying to get you to say my actual name.”

She gestured defensively. “It’s a very delicate thing the relationship between two monarchs!”

“Zelda,” he replied, rolling his eyes with every ounce of drama in his body, “we’ve been friends since we were like twelve.” She grinned but wouldn’t meet his eyes, choosing instead to take another drink from the bottle. “I forget sometimes that just because you can make entire nations sit up and beg like a well trained puppy doesn’t mean you’re not massively socially inept.”

She choked on the drink and sputtered. “That is– How rude can you– How dare you–!” But even through the fading twilight and the long shadows of the mausoleum, he could see the colour rushing along her cheekbones.

“It’s true,” he said, merciless, “you don’t know how to people, Zelda. And a baby is a very special people.”

She wiped her mouth to clear the wine and handed him back the bottle. She shrugged and looked forward again, watching the lights start to wink on in the city below. “I know how to people,” she said quietly. “It’s person I don’t know how to do.”

“I mean, that’s what I said.”

“You said it grammatically wrong and it ruined your point.” He didn’t bother to fight her on it. She looked too distant. “I can tell you, with ninety percent accuracy, what people need, Link. I can look at this city, at this nation, and I can tell you how they’re feeling, and what they want, and how to direct them where you need them to go. But it only…it only works on the aggregate. Individuals are…they’re confusing and contradictory and their needs and wants are so, so much harder to meet.” Her expression, for a moment, was so lost his heart broke. “I mean…I barely know how to…how to be a person myself. A person who just… just is. I can be a symbol. I can be a leader. I can be a… be a queen. That’s easy. But to just… just be me?” She seemed to contemplate it and then shook her head. “And now…now she’s here, and she’s just… just her. And I don’t know how to… I don’t know what to… do about it.”

She didn’t look up, but she could feel the weight of the stone behind her. Feel the shadows of the people in it stretching long. Long and empty for too much of her life. “You’ve had… so many parents, Link. So many people who loved you and cared for you and taught you how to be who you needed to be. But mine… it’s different when you’re a head of state. Your priorities have to be different. They loved me, I know they loved me, but…”

“They didn’t raise you,” he said. “Impa…?”

“More like a stern aunt who is deeply invested in your healthy development but moves into and out of your life based on the requirements of her own,” Zelda replied. “I say that with full respect, and Impa’s presence in my life means the world to me. It truly does. I wouldn’t be who I am without her, but…”

“It’s not the same,” Link said.

“No,” Zelda replied. “It’s not.”

They sat for a while in silence, trading the wine bottle back and forth and watching the city transition from day life to night life.

“What,” Link said eventually, “is the one thing you want, for her, more than anything?”

“To be there,” Zelda said. She said it so fast and so fiercely she startled herself. “So she doesn’t have to figure it out on her own.”

“Then start there,” he said. “The rest of it we’ll figure out as we go, but no matter what, do that. If the rest of it is rough, who cares. Just be there, Zelda.”

She smiled, grim… but determined. “My schedulers won’t like it,” she noted.

“The way I figure it, everything in life can be divided up into two different groups: you problems, and them problems.” He quirked an eyebrow at her as he took a drink, “which do you think that is?”

She sniggered despite herself.

They sat in a silence more sated than the last until the cold and the schedule of a newborn baby pushed them back to their feet and onto the path back toward the palace, hand in hand.

#loz rr #Anonymous

[promptrose]

/natalia-like-i-was-holding-on-to-a-little-eight Part two of 'congrats, it's a gerudo king' seems to have vanished!

Try now!

#Think I fixed it #Administration #Anonymous #Ask Rose

[promptrose]

Now I need to know the moment Amplissa/Aliza started liking Link.

Jinni wears the black the way another woman might wear a wound: back straight, eyes forward, face proud, but there’s no masking the limp. She catches Aliza’s eye as she passes, and the latter keeps her face stiff, offering no support but hiding her disappointment as well.

Jinni is young, she showed so much promise. She should have known better than to trust the witches.

"Jinni of the Black," says the King, his unfamiliar voice ringing around the room. It strikes a different note than their last king, like a babbling brook compared to an avalanche. His accent makes it worse, highlights the differences, highlights his own foreignness. Highlights just how badly they failed in their Oath to She who had entrusted him to them. "You have been accused of High Treason against the King of the Gerudo, according to Gerudo Law. It has been brought before me that you were an accomplice in the recent attempts of the Witches to kidnap and either kill or corrupt me."

His voice is steadier than she expected, but he has trouble controlling his expression. His face is not the stone it should be, and the entire room can see the ghost of the visions the Witches cursed him with dancing behind his eyes.

The Sheikah standing on his left shifts his weight, just so. It’s a nonchalant gesture, not meant to draw attention, but the King seems to draw strength from his presence. Aliza is unable to prevent the sour curl of her lips. A Sheikah has no business in this room, being witness to this event. And a Gerudo King has no business relying on one for strength.

Except that the Sheikah have done more to protect him than his own people have, so what right have they to complain or correct him?

"Have you anything to say for yourself?"

Aliza has warned Jinni before that her pride will be the death of her, but still she stands there and faces him and says nothing. Because there’s nothing to say, nothing she CAN say, except to acknowledge what she did. But even now she struggles to give voice to her own failures.

Indiga nudges her with her spear, and whispers something only Jinni can hear. Jinni grits her teeth.

"Nothing," she says, "except that I accept whatever punishment you would lay upon me."

The entire room is so quiet, they can all hear the King draw in a deep breath and let it out again slowly.

"In that case, Jinni of the Black shall cease to exist," he says. The answer everyone was expecting. She can feel the entire room settling into the pronouncement, but apparently their new King is not done. "You shall instead be Jinni of the Red." A startled silence greets this pronouncement, and he barrels ahead into it, heedless of the stunned stares of the women in the room. "You are stripped of the title Elite and the uniform of the White. You will once again have to prove your worth before regaining your status. But you WILL have that chance."

Aliza stares at him, mouth agape. When his face offers no answers, she turns to Rue, standing on his right. The old woman is not surprised. Her face is carefully and appropriately neutral. But she catches Aliza’s eye and offers her a slight nod to confirm that he is serious, and the judgement will stand.

The King turns away from Jinni to address the rest of them. “I forgo the Death sentence usually inherent in a crime such as Jinni’s for one reason. What was treason in action, was fidelity in intent. Jinni believed that I was a threat to you, her people. She was wrong, and for this she is punished. But she was not treasonous. Her loyalty to her sisters and their safety is commendalbe, though I hope in the future she will exercise better judgement in her decision, and perhaps trust her sisters a little more than she did.”

Aliza stares at him, replaying the words in her head to analyze and understand them. The judgement is unprecedented. This is a clear-cut case of treason. The violation of Jinni’s oaths. She cannot recall a single other instance of a crime of this magnitude being met with a demotion instead of execution or exile.

Because…because she thought she was defending her sisters…?

"In addition to being stripped of her title," adds the King above the murmuring of the crowd, and Aliza’s face settles back into stone. Ah. Here it is. He’s going to settle for exile, and— "Jinni will be required to requite her role in my kidnapping by acting as a bodyguard for myself and the Ambassador on our journey. A punishment equal to the crime. You aided those who wished to harm me, and now you will hinder them."

Aliza stares openly at him. They all do.  He runs his eyes over the crowd, taking in their reactions, meeting their eyes, and hiding nothing in his own. He isn’t sure, they can see it on his face. He isn’t sure if he’s going to regret the sentence. He isn’t sure if they’re going to accept it. He isn’t sure about any part of it. But he IS sure that whatever comes of it, he’s made the right decision. He will not go back on it. And she’s surprised to see that glint of steel in his eyes.

A weight she’s been carrying in her breast suddenly lightens and expands and flutters new wings against her ribcage. Perhaps, she realizes slowly, they’re wrong about what his existence means. Perhaps they’ve read the signs wrong.

Perhaps…

"Oh my Goddess," murmurs a woman behind her, aghast, "why weren’t we betting on this?"

***

"No," Amplissa corrects her immediately, "I do NOT like him. I think he is weak and immature and a liability for all of us. But if I don’t go on HIS team, I have to lead the OTHER team, and you’re not ON the other team. This isn’t about him, it’s about you."

"My mistake," Aliza replies demurely.

"Just because I don’t like him," Amplissa insists days later, wiping away tears and struggling not to start laughing again every time her mind wanders back to the story she’s repeating, "doesn’t mean I can’t think a funny story was funny if he’s the one telling it."

"Of course, of course," Aliza agrees. "How silly of me."

"I don’t have to like somebody," Amplissa points out a couple of weeks later, wincing as Aliza dabs at the cut under her eye, "to defend their honour against a baseless attack by a person who doesn’t know what they’re talking about. I defended your honour LONG before I even liked you."

"You loved me from the moment you saw me," Aliza points out, and that Amplissa can’t argue.

"Oh," Amplissa cries, too loud and too slurred, the month after that, "so now if you decide to stay up all night drinking and playing stupid Hylian card games with someone, it means you like them?"

"Generally," Aliza points out, a little slurred herself, "that is what that means."

"Nabooru was there too, I don’t like her."

"Yes you do. You like her a lot."

"Oh. You were there. Do I like you?"

"No, you love me."

"Right, that’s not like."

"That’s more than like. That’s the…the likiest like."

"Oh. Well whatever. He’s all right, I guess."

"You know what?" Aliza says, falling into bed, "I’ll take it."

#loz rr #amplissa #aliza #jinni #Link #Anonymous #ask Rose #I had to go back and read part of The Return for this #I hope you're happy

[promptrose]

I would die for some Hunter/Neesha fluff!

He knows he screwed up the instant he sees the wetness on her cheeks, like streaks of silver paint in the moonlight. "Sorry," he says immediately, raising his hands and turning away from her face. "I didn't realize--I just thought--I should have--"

He's got nothing. He doesn't know how to finish. He doesn't know her well enough. If it was one of his friends from back home, he'd go over and drop an arm around her shoulders. But that won't work for Neesha. If it was Link, he'd crack a few jokes, but he doesn't think she'll go for that either.

What Neesha goes for is privacy, and he's violated that by intruding on the moment at all. Should have rolled over and minded his own buisness. Should have pretended he didn't hear anything.

But that's not what he did. And now he has to deal with it.

She turns her red eyes aggressively onto the road sprawling across the field below them. She doesn't bother wiping her cheeks, or hiding her face. She doesn't deny it, but she doesn't respond either.

Go back to sleep, Hunter, he tells himself. Just leave her alone.

"I know," he says instead, hesitant, wincing at the curling of her lip and the narrowing of her eyes, "that you don't have a reason to trust me, or anything. I get that. So I'm just going to...leave you alone. But if you need to, or want to talk, or want a distraction from...whatever it is. Just...whatever you need, I'm willing."

She glances at him, and to his surprise, she nods and turns her face forward again. He hesitates, then nods back and lays down in his blankets.

For a long moment the only sounds are Link's soft snoring and Neesha's tightly controlled breaths.

"I miss home," she says softly, half-hoping he's asleep already. "I needed to leave. I did the right thing. But sometimes..." Her voice trails off and she doesn't finish the thought.

Hunter glances at her out of the corner of his eye.  "Sometimes," he supplies, feeling her expression echoed in his own heart, "you want your own bed and food that makes sense and people who know you."

She finally reaches up and wipes her cheeks dry.  She draws in a deep breath and looks over at him. "Do you want to spar?"

It's gotta be one in the morning. He's only got a few more hours of sleep before it's his turn on watch. They've got a long day of hard travel in front of them tomorrow morning.

But he says "Yes" without hesitation.

#loz rr #apparently it's Zeladanial's birthday #so happy birthday! #hunter #neesha #Anonymous #ask Rose

[promptrose]

Can you do one with Amplisa and Aliza from RR, after they meet Link

"Issy."

The mound of blankets shifted and grunted a response.

"Issy, come on. You can't stay in there forever."

The blankets mumbled something rude sounding.

Aliza sighed and got out of the chair. She moved over to the pile and climbed on top of it, ignoring the sounds of protest within. "You know," she mused, leaning more of her weight than was strictly required on her elbow and whatever piece of soft flesh was underneath it. "I could have sworn you told me you weren't religious. I've got more reason to be upset than you do, but you don't see me acting like I've escaped from the nursery." She took the edge of the blanket between her fingers and pulled it gently down and away from Amplissa's face.

The other Gerudo was staring at her with an expression caught somewhere between hurt and anger, and Aliza immediately regretted her light tone. "It's not about religion," said Amplissa.

Aliza shifted her weight off of the other woman's organs and slid down beside her on the blankets instead. "Then what is it about?"

"It's about--," tried Amplissa, but she stopped frustrated. "It's about--!" She tried to pull the blankets up again but Aliza had them firmly pinned underneath her. She gestured inarticulately for a moment, attempting to convey her thoughts through motion, but when that inevitably failed - as it always did - she managed to scrounge up enough words to say: "If the Wind doesn't want our service anymore, why doesn't She just give us all back our sons and be done with us." The offence in her face faded under a lost and weary expression.  She shook her head and buried her face in Aliza's shoulder. "I've had enough of Hers."

Aliza didn't respond for a long moment. She curled her arm over Amplissa and idly ran her hand over the familiar tapestry of old battles carved into her back. When she spoke, it was softly, hesitant to voice the words, but sure of them. "I think She knows that. And I think She's sorry."

"Sorry," Amplissa replied bitterly. "So sorry she sent us a joke of a King. He's as good as Hylian."

"What she sent us," Aliza replied firmly, "is a message."

"'I'm breaking up with you in the worst way possible?'"

"'I realize that I have not held up my end of the deal,'" Aliza corrected her. "'I realize that I failed you. And I realize that things cannot ever be again what they were.'"

"How do you get all of that out of that foolish boy?"

"Because he's so different. He's too different. It's like She sat down and went, 'how can I make it clear that I realize the fault is mine?' And she sent us a son so different from past sons there's no possible way we could think she doesn't realize something needs to change.  Except for the particularly obtuse among us." She pulled her fingers through Amplissa's ponytail to diffuse any offence at the comment. "Link is unlike any King we've ever had before, and I believe he'll be unlike any King we'll ever have again. Because he isn't meant to be a King, he's meant to be a message. A sign."

"I don't like him." The statement was petulant and stubborn.

"You don't have to. There is no obligation to accept an apology just because it's offered. But between you and me, I think She means it." She shifted back so she could consider Amplissa's expression. "Jinni's judgement was today. That's why I actually came to find you."

Amplissa's face went dark with a collection of mixed emotions. "I never liked her. And she did something stupid. But she was a good woman, and it's a loss all the same."

"I agree," Aliza said. "Except she's not dead."

Amplissa didn't react for a moment, processing the words and their meaning. She lifted herself onto her elbow and blinked at Aliza. "How is she not dead? She should be dead." She scowled, affronted. "She ran?"

"No," Aliza said. "He pardoned her. Dropped her back to the red, then made her his personal bodyguard for some away mission he's got it in his head is really important."

Amplissa stared at her. "I know all of those words, but I can't make sense of them in that order. I need you to try again."

"That's the order they go in," Aliza replied. "You're going to have to manage."

"But why would he--how COULD he--if I were him, I would have killed her."

"But he's not you," Aliza answered with a slight smile. "Or Ganon." She pushed herself up and slid out of the tangle of blankets and limbs. "Our new King will be gone shortly, for a few days at least. Perhaps, if you are still unsure, you might make a Pilgrimage to the Spirit Temple and ask Her what Her intentions are yourself."

Amplissa gave her a knowing look. "This wasn't about me at all was it," she said. "This was about you not wanting me to embarass you."

"You've already embarassed me," Aliza replied matter-of-factly. "I would definitely like you to stop." She softened. "But I would also like you to be able to find your peace again. There are many reasons I am unhappy with you hiding in this room."

"And you think I'm going to find it in the Spirit Wastes?"

"I think for a problem that had nothing to do with religion," Aliza replied, "all of your complaints had an awful lot to do with a deity."

"All right," Amplissa said. "I'll go. But if I don't get my answer, I'm coming back here to punch him in the face, and let the seas take me."

"They'll take us both then," Aliza replied. "But it won't come to that." She bent down and kissed Amplissa's cheek before moving to the door. "I have enough faith for both of us."

#loz rr #amplissa #aliza #Anonymous #ask Rose

[promptrose]

RR!Link tries to write poetry to show Zelda that he can be "sophisticated" and "cultured".

She looks up from the page and contrary to the soft, touched, emotional expression I was hoping for, she looks like an angry school teacher who has caught a particularly troublesome student cheating. Which is, you know, more or less the case.I lick my lips and cock my head at her. "...well?" When in doubt pretend you are know nothing. "The sentiment is sweet," she says, folding her hands in front of her. "But you didn't write this.""Wha--of course--of COURSE I did!" I sputter. She draws an arc with her eyebrow. "Opalescent," she says, the same way legal type people say Exhibit A. "It means something that has a similar quality to opals," I say immediately, because of COURSE I looked up all the words. "It's a good word.""It's a lovely word," she agrees. "But it's not a YOU word.""It's a...it's a me word," I say. "What...what do you think IS a me word?""How much did you pay him?" she asks. She is referring to Hunter, of course. "I did not--how can you accuse me--I've never been so offended--!""Link."I stare her down. I try to stare her down. I avoid her gaze and sulk like a child. "Top bunk for three weeks.""Hmm," she says, not without sympathy. "That's pretty steep.""You're pretty worth it." I say it begrudgingly. It's true, but it's still expensive. "Well, that gets you a couple points," she says, "but faking what should be a deeply personal expression of emotion and somehow thinking I'd fall for such an obvious ploy loses you so many more."I wince. "I tried to write you my own," I say. "But it's not...I mean...." I make a disgruntled noise. "Opalescent isn't a me word, if you take my meaning.""Show it to me," she says, curiosity chipping away at the stern disappointment in her face. I make a face at her and try not to blush (I fail). "No," I say. "It's...it's dinky.""It's HONEST," she corrects me. "Show it to me!""People write you poetry all the time!" I protest. "Actual poets! Who actually do literature stuff. I've seen their stuff, Zelda, they're really good.""They're not you." She holds out her hand. "Show it to me."I hesitate. "Link," she says. "Give me my poem. My REAL poem."I squirm and growl but I shove my hand into my pouch and pull out a badly crumple piece of parchment. I hold it just out of her reach. "It's bad," I warn her. "Hunter looked at me like I was slowly killing him after he read it.""Hunter is weak and not nearly as good at this as he thinks he is, give me my poem." She snatches it from my hand and smooths the crumpled page out with more gentleness than it deserves. "There once was a Princess named Zelda," she reads out loud. She's not even done the line and her lip is already twitching. I can't tell if she wants to laugh or cry. "Who was clever, and pretty, and swell - duh! Her boyfriend was Link, He loved her in pink, And his heart to her heart he did meld-a.""Your name is hard to rhyme," I mutter. It's the best I can manage. If I could die now I would. "Oh Link," she says, and she looks up at me with a soft, touched, emotional expression - mixed with a deep and tickled amusement. "It's the most beautiful thing I think I've ever read."She leans in while I'm still staring at her in surprise and kisses me deeply. She pulls away and slips the folded up parchment into her pocket, then pats my chest and straightens out my collar. "Maybe stick to Ocarina serenades from now on though, hmm?"I grin at her. "Way ahead of you princess."

#LoZ #LoZ oot #LoZ rr #Zelda #link

[promptrose]

I've seen your posts on Hyrule Warriors and that one about Midna and Darunia made me really want to read something with them in it. I haven't got anything specific in mind, just some sort of interaction between the two you may have thought up :)

Their eyes happen to meet across the battlefield. It's a chance thing. She is throwing a moblin, he is crushing one, and as she comes down he comes up and they meet in the middle. There's a connection there. A common spark leaping to life from their shared appreciation for the straightforwardness of violence.

It surprises her. There is nothing common about Midna, and there never has been. She can count on one hand the number of times she has experienced something similar, and two of them were with some incarnation of that Hero kid.

It does not surprise him. Darunia knows sparks.

***

Their eyes meet again that night, across the fire, but this time it's deliberate. He catches her eye as she waltzes away from a thoroughly scandalized Ruto, looking for all the world like a cat with a mouth full of mouse. He raises his brow in an invitation and after a moment's consideration, she crosses to join him.

She alights on his shoulder without waiting for an invitation. "This Hero," she says, "is not like mine at all." A single fang peeks out of her smirk. "He's like a mirror image. Weak and strong in different places."

"He's not like mine either," Darunia agrees. "Particularly in terms of how seriously he takes himself."

"Yet here we are," Midna says. "Running when he calls."

"Yet here we are," Darunia agrees.

They sit in silence for a moment and watch the flames dance. Then the other half of Midna's mouth slides upward. "Of course," she says, "he won't call again until tomorrow morning."

He meets her eye and a common spark leaps to life from their shared appreciation of a straightforwardness of a different kind.

"No," he agrees, "he won't."

#LoZ #LoZ HW #Darunia #Midna

[promptrose]

What was everybody's reaction when they found out Nat was pregnant/Link was a boy? I'd love to see :)

Part 1:

“When are you going to tell Brayden?”

Natalia blinked and straightened.  “I had no specific plans to tell him.”  Her face fell.  “Am I supposed to tell him?  Is that a requirement?”  It fell further.  “Is this going to be one of those things?”

“Oh it’s going to be a thing,” came the response.  “A big thing.  I’m willing to bet he cries.”

For a moment, she looked tempted, then shook her head.  “Fool’s bet.  What does this mean to him?  What kind of crying is this going to be?”

“Happy crying and scared crying and sad crying and fulfilled crying all at once.  It means a lot of things to us, but you’re going to need to talk to him about what it means to you – because I’m assuming, based on what you’ve told me before, it’s different.”

She frowned.  “It’s just a baby,” she pointed out.  “She will mean nothing more than any other Gerudo means.”

Her companion’s face softened in that way Natalia hated.  It always meant something was about to be complicated, because for a people who lived in caves like insects, the Sheikah were unusually opposed to simplicity.  “To Brayden it won’t be a baby, it will be his daughter.  And I know she’ll be a Gerudo, absolutely, but…she’ll also be a Sheikah.  And we don’t raise our children as a community the way you do in the desert.  We raise them within the family unit.”

Natalia stared at her for a long time.  “You don’t…have a nursery?”

“Not a centralized one,” came the gentle response.  “You and Bray will have to request a move to a larger set of rooms and outfit one yourself.”

“…for a single child?!”

“For your child, yes,” she answered.  “Your responsibility.  Yours and Bray’s.  There isn’t…there is no one person whose job it is to raise the children.  The people who created the child, or adopted the child are responsible for that.”

“That is…that is inefficient.”

“It’s not really about efficiency,” came the response.  “She will be your sister, as you’ve explained to me before, but until this war is over and you can go home…she’s also your daughter, Natalia.”

Natalia leaned back against the wall of the bath and after a long moment she closed her eyes.  “It’s not the war that keeps me from returning home,” she said.

They didn’t speak again until they were on their back to their rooms from the baths.  “Natalia?”

“Hmm?”

“We’ll help.  Bruiser and I.  You won’t have to do it entirely alone.”

Natalia glanced at her, startled, then nodded sharply.  “Thank you, Aeria.”

Part 2:

http://ask-rr.tumblr.com/post/16341768064/natalia-like-i-was-holding-on-to-a-little-eight

#loz rr #natalia #brayden #aeria #bruiser #Link #'Congratulations' Bruiser said dully 'it’s a Gerudo King.' #Anonymous #ask Rose

[promptrose]

I brought up Link's hair being let out of it's pony tail in RR, which then lead to us all wondering what would happen if he ever let it down. Thoughts? :3

 There is no sound I love more in the world than that of Zelda swearing.

She just does it with so much feeling.  She tries not to unless she has a really good reason, unless she really thinks it’s worth it, and you can hear it in her voice.  Swear words have weight in her mouth, they have a dignity I couldn’t give them if I was wearing a fancy suit and a monocle.

I perk up at the sound of a particularly choice word from down the hall and lean my chair back to peer at her as she storms into the room.  “What happened?”  I think about it.  “Was it Eldrick?”  I think about it some more.  “I can punch him for you.”

She gives me a withering look.  “What would that solve?”

“Who said anything about solving things?”

She rolls her eyes and moves over to the desk to starts ruffling through the papers on it, grabbing a few of them and organizing them into a stack.  “It wasn’t Eldrick anyway.  It was Durnam.”

I blink in surprise.  “What?  But I like Durnam.”

“I like Durnam too,” she says, “at least until I have to talk to him about taxes.”  She reaches into the drawer and starts digging in it, looking progressively more annoyed.

“What are you looking for?”

“Something to tie these with,” she replies, gesturing at the neat pile of paper.  “I need to roll them up and get them delivered to Shenyen.”

“Don’t you have servants to do this for you?”

“Sure,” she said, “but then I’d still be stuck in that room with Durnam and I probably would have had him executed by now.”  She straightens and points sternly at me.  “That comment was not an invitation or request for assistance, and does not leave this room.”

“I did say I liked Durnam.”

“You’re not much gentler with your friends, Link.  Do I seriously not have anything to tie this with?!”  She slams the drawer shut and straightens with a huff.

I blink at her.  “Want my hair tie?  I can go grab another one from my room.”

This offer earns me a grateful glance.  “Yes, please,” she says.  “Thank you.”

I pull my hat off and reach back to free the tie from my hair.  “I can run the papers down to Shenyen for you too if you like.”  My hair swings down around my face and I hold out the tie.  “I need to head to that end of the palace anyway.  Black said he wanted to discuss some—what?  Why are you looking at me like that?”

She’s giving me a look like she suddenly doesn’t recognize me.  She takes what appears to be an unconscious step toward me.  “Your hair.”

“What about it?” I ask, paranoid suddenly.  “Is there something stuck in it?  I was crawling around in Bruiser’s attic earlier, I might have—.”  She reaches out with a hand to touch it and I stop talking.

“Nayru save me,” she murmurs.  She brushes it back and gently tucks half of it behind my ear, then takes my chin in her fingers and lifts my face to study it intently.  “You’ve been hiding it under that hideous hat.”

“I’m going to be honest and admit I’m having trouble interpreting this situation right now.”

“I could be dating this hair.”  She cups my face in both her hands and puts her face very close to mine.  “Link, why aren’t I dating this hair?”

“…because it’s attached to a sentient life form that is presumably more attractive, being a complex and complete being, instead of just, like…hair?”

“You wound me,” she says, pressing her forehead against mine.  “You wound me by hiding this from me.”

“I can’t decide if this is a ploy to make me get rid of my hat or if you’re legitimately attracted to my hair,” I admit, eyes moving from her eyes to her lips and back again.  “Also I’m having trouble remembering what we’re talking about because you’re very close and you smell really nice.”

“I should probably get back to Durnam,” she murmurs.

“Forget Durnam,” I reply.  “Durnam’s a jerk who doesn’t like taxes.  Durnam’s the enemy.  We don’t like Durnam.”

“No, I guess we don’t,” she says, and my reply is lost in her mouth before I can finish uttering it.

#LoZ #Link #Zelda #And then Impa walked in and the mood was super ruined #olliecow #ask Rose #loz rr

[promptrose]

I'd LOVE to see Hunter's Quisros. It must've been hilarious for him to walk in and find Link there.

The deep rumble of the stone guardians spinning to grant entrance to the Quisrol echoes down the long hall and startles me from my dozing.

Oh thank the Goddesses.  He’s finally here.

You’d think the Hero of Time would be better at scheduling things.

I scramble to my feet and manage to lean up against the wall all nonchalantly just before he rounds the corner.  His brow is all furrowed and his face is doing that serious thing that makes me want to hit him in the face with a pie.  You know, where his dignity is showing.  Can’t have that.

“Yo,” I say.

His head snaps up and his eyes shift their focus from whatever was going on in his head to me.  He is visibly startled and I exult in the rare expression.  He twists to look behind him, back toward the main caverns, and then turns back to me, a rare and beautiful look of confusion on his face.  “What the Hell?  I just finished talking to you.”

I open my mouth to answer him, but his eyes have already found the hilt of the Master Sword sticking up over my shoulder and understanding dawns within them.  His mouth pulls down into a severe frown, but his eyes light up with amusement and I know I’m not in half as much trouble as he wants me to think I am.

At least with him.

“Spoiler warning,” I say.  “You totally pass your Quisros.  Your after-party is kind of boring, though.  A lot of speeches.  Boring ones.  To me.  Pretty sure you enjoy them all.”

He crosses his arms and shifts his weight.  “Your dad owes my dad a hundred rupees.”

“A hundred rupees?!” I say.  “Why?”

“Because my Dad bet him ten that you would find a way to be in here somehow, and your dad upped it to a hundred because he has that much faith in you.”

I stare at him, flabbergasted.  “What?!  Why would he do that?!  When did I ever imply I am worthy of that kind of faith?!”

Hunter shrugs.  “He hasn’t known you long enough.  He still thinks you’re cool.  A lot of us went through the same phase before we realized the truth.”

“You never bet a hundred rupees on me doing something I was supposed to.”

“I never thought you were cool.”

“And yet,” I point out, “you followed me into the Quisrol a good six months before you were old enough to enter, at extreme personal risk to yourself and your future career opportunities, to help a someone you’d only just met survive his Quisros.”  I offer him a grin and get one back in exchange.  “There was no way I wasn’t returning the favour.”

“Mine’s not going to be nearly as exciting for you,” he says.  “You’re going to have to just sit there for a while.”

“I want you to remember the lengths to which I am willing to go for you when I puke on you on the way back to our rooms tonight.”

He snorts.  “You came from tomorrow morning didn’t you?  I thought you looked hung over.”

“Party totally picks up after the speeches are done.”

I fall into step beside him and we continue toward the Pedestal and whatever waits for him in its reflection.  It’s the same walk we took last time, not that long ago really, but the space between us then and us now is a chasm.  So much happened in that space, so much changed.

“I’m really glad you followed me in here,” I say.

“I’m really glad you used time travel to follow me in here, because we might actually be able to get through it without my dad being able to prove we broke the Quisros rules twice.”

“Also, I won’t have to pay him a hundred rupees because my dad has no money.”

“Also that.”  We cross the threshold into the pedestal’s room and pause in the doorway.  He stares at the fountain-shaped pedestal for a long moment, face unreadable.  Then he glances at me out of the corner of his eye.  “I’m glad I followed you in here too,” he says, and moves forward without waiting for a response.

I settle in against the wall and get ready to have nothing to do for a while.

The things we do for family.

#loz rr #Hunter #Link #Anonymous #ask Rose

[promptrose]

It takes approximately five "I'm serious!"s from me, three "You think I'd lie about this?  Why would I lie about this?  You think I'm HAPPY about it?"s from Nabooru (each more offended than the last), and one brief summoning of BOTH Impa AND Brayden to confirm that the story of Brayden the Fucked Up Sheikah Who Brought a Gerudo Home And Got Her Pregnant is true, before she stops presenting us with reasons we're wrong or lying.

In fact, she stops talking at all.

She just stares at us, as though language has suddenly become treacherous and untrustworthy.  Like the things we are saying are SO untrue the Hylian tongue is unable to speak of them EXCEPT as truths.   If Hunter were here I would make him say it in Sheikah and hope maybe THAT would work.

“I don’t have time for this,” Nabooru says with a growl.  She teleports away with an irritated shake of her head, and Zelda keeps staring at the spot where she had been.  As though unaware that a woman named Nabooru had ever been there, or had, in fact existed.

I let it continue for a moment more before I raise an eyebrow.  “Zelda?” I hazard.  “Are you—?”

But she raises a hand to stop me.  “Shut up,” she says.  “I’m thinking.”

“About how I’m the King of the Gerudo?  Zelda?  Zelda?  Are you thinking about how I’m King of the Gerudo?  Because I am.  Zelda?”

“I said shut up,” she replies, her brow furrowing in concentration.

“What are you doing, trying to solve the meaning of life?” I demand.

“Trying to determine if there is any possible way that this is going to end well,” she replies.  “Aaaaaaand no.”  She sags back into her chair and turns her eyes up to the ceiling.  “No there’s not.”

I frown at her, but opt to put aside my offence at this less than enthusiastic response to try to confirm: “Does that mean you believe me now?”

She reaches up with graceful fingers to gently pinch the bridge of her nose.  “I believe you as long as I don’t look at you,” she says.  “Or think about you too hard.  Maybe if you stopped wearing that hat I would believe you more.”

“That wasn’t even subtle,” I accuse her.

“Neither is your hat.”

“You’re just mad because I’m a King and you’re just a Princess.”

“I’m not mad, I’m sorry,” she retorts, dragging her eyes down to look at me finally.  “So very, very sorry for those poor women who do not even begin to understand what they have inherited.  I will have to send them a fruit basket and a condolences card.”  She gestures like she’s signing said card.  “Sorry to hear about your King.  Our thoughts are with you.  But please do not return him.”

“Hey, at least it solves the commoner-dating-royalty problem, am I right?”

“Oh my darling Link,” she says, and rests that elegant hand sympathetically on my cheek.  “You’ve always had trouble understanding where the frying pan ends and the fire begins, but this is impressive, even for you.”  She rubs her thumb along my cheekbone as I frown at her.  “Yes, it solves the commoner-dating-royalty problem, but it introduces so many new and exciting problems I don’t think I could even list them all.  For starters, you’re going to have to start attending court events.  And I don’t mean parties.  I mean meetings.”  She withdraws her hand and the illusion of sympathy it offered.

“What?!” I demand.  “Why?!  That sounds boring!”

“Welcome to the fire, Link,” she says as she rises.  “Should’ve stayed in the frying pan.  I’ll send someone by with some books for you to start reading to get up to speed on the appropriate behaviour and protocols surrounding a foreign dignitary of your stature, and a few others given the unique relationship between my people and yours.”

“Are you mad at me?” I demand.  “Is this punishment?”  I twist in my chair as she walks past me toward the door.  “Is it about the hat?!”  She ignores me as she pushes it open and walks out.  “YOU CAN’T MAKE ME DO ANYTHING; I AM A KING!                “

“A visiting King,” comes the response, and then she is gone.

I turn back around in my seat and stare straight ahead for a long moment.

What the Hell just happened?

#LoZ RR #Link #Zelda #Nabooru