TW: PTSD (Post Tramautic Stress Disorder); violence; mental illness; blood; one instance of strong language. Link is portrayed as very unstable in this fic, if you think that may bother you or act as some form of trigger please avoid until such a time as you might be feeling better, and I wish you the best of luck.

"You'll deafen yourself with the shrill sound of your own screams"

Goosebumps slid up his arms in the same way that a bead of sweat trickled down his spine. Movement seemed to have ceased. No, not movement, it was life that had come to a shuddering stop.

Link knew it was life, because his own heartbeat was gone. It must have evaporated, spiraled away with the rest of his courage.

The perspiration that soaked through his shirt, settling on the small of his back … was it truly sweat or … was it blood? Blood beading and spilling over his frame, warming the gooseflesh back into its place, sucking away his heartbeat.

Stealing the very breath of his lungs, Link could not find the place in his throat where he would inhale. Nothing worked, nothing seemed to fit into place.

"We seem to bump into each other time and time again"

The voice that cackled, shrieking in his mind, echoed in empty space. Hysteric laughter bounced off of walls that could not be seen in the darkness, and sharp nails dug into the back of Link's shirt.

"Oh, it's no coincidence."

"Skychild."

When something clutched around Link's forearm he screamed. The hand itself was cold, fingers cruel as they latched onto him, but the touch seared at exposed flesh. Even if his heart had left, it seemed Link's senses remained. The burning of his own arm clashed with the reek, the choking smoke of something burning. His own body blazing into emptiness.

The worst part was hearing his own scream, so awful, wrenching, void of any threat of humanity. It was the sound an animal made, something helpless to stop its own suffering. Something that knew it was in pain but lacked the secondary reasoning to understand why or how. All it would know is to relieve itself it would have to gnaw at the appendage, at what it was trapped by, permanently damaging itself. Ruining its own life in a desperate instinct to escape.

"I told you that the next time we met, I'd make your ears bleed from the sound of your own screams."

Link felt something cold at his feet, ice clutching at his ankles, clawing at his legs and opening up dark chasms of flowing blood. Blood so dark it was black, even as ice trapped him, and the arms that encircled him burned against his torso and through his shirt.

"This time, there will be no heroic escape."

"Skychild."

A flicker, darkness.

Weightlessness.

Link woke up because the hand that touched his forehead didn't burn as Ghirahim's did. Instead this was cool, soothing.

"Link, Link!" The voice, so warm, filled with real concern.

Link woke with his back arched strangely, a weird scent meeting his nose, Zelda's worried expression swam into sight above him.

"Link." Her voice was gentle, immediately cooling the adrenaline that surged in his blood. "Are you okay? You were crying, and thrashing…again." Zelda's face screwed up with grief, and she took her hand away from his forehead. Link took in a deep breath of air, relishing in the sound of his own heart beating in his head, and then tried to settle its pace.

"Zelda." His voice croaked a bit, she looked at him, hand over her mouth, like she was trying to hold back tears. It was astonishing how easily Zelda cried. The sight of her friend having a nightmare. Link wished sometime he could have cried so easily, cried when the heat of the Eldin volcano threatened to cook his bones, cried when the Guardians of the Silent Realm pursued hot on his heels, cried when he shot to the surface of the lake, lungs bursting for air, only to have air stolen from him by the blunt force of a cranoic.

Cried when he walked into the Fire Sanctuary, and his eyes met Ghirahim's, and his knees went weak.

"You and I, we're bound by a thread of fate."

That's what Ghirahim told him that day. At their second 'official' battle. Bound by a thread of fate, like two pieces that fit together. One to fail, one to succeed. Link clung to that fact as he swung his feet over the edge of the bed, and sunk his head into his hands. I succeeded, I defeated Ghirahim and I defeated Demise they will never threaten us again.

It was sick, Link thought, how often he had to remind himself of this. How much of a presence they had in his mind, even though they were gone.

Forever, they're gone forever. Sealed away.

Link looked toward the door, out to where the Goddess Statue now dominated the Surface. He wondered how powerful Demise could become in this time, would the Imprisoned ever develop enough power to break the Statue apart, to rise again? His own stomach clenched up in a grotesque horror at the thought.

No, no that's impossible.

But Demise…

Link thought of Demise, as he leaped into the air. With lightning sparking at the edge of his blade as he buried the Master Sword into his heart- whatever constituted as that demon's heart. Blood seeping from Link's head, from his arms and torso, sure he would die as soon as the demon. Link thought of his words, even as the Master Sword tugged at his life force to seal him away.

"I will rise again!"

That threat in itself opened up a pit of horror inside Link. "Those like you… those who share the blood of the goddess and the spirit of the hero …. They are eternally bound to this curse."

What did that mean? It made Link's head throb, did that mean that his descendants would be doomed to walk the path that he took? Would they be forced to face such harrowing circumstances, so many instances of death, would they have to face Demise again all because he somehow wasn't strong enough?

Or … what if it wasn't even his descendants? What if it were random people? So Link could not stop these strands of fate simply by refusing to have children.

"An incarnation of my hatred shall ever follow your kind, dooming them to wander a blood-soaked sea of darkness for all time!"

Link let his face fall into his hands, his body shook with a deep panic that he could not bring himself to control. How could everyone look at him and call him a Hero? How could they praise his name, how could Zelda smile every day?

How could he have won so valiantly, and failed so miserably all at the same time?

After a moment, a ragged sort of sob clutched past Link's throat. It was a pathetic whimper, but it was enough to force a shocked Zelda back into motion.

"Link, Link what is it? What can I do?" She pleaded, bending beside him. But Link was lost.

His mind roiled against blazing walls of fire, metallic machines without feelings, hordes of bokoblins swarming him under a night sky, pain. Since the time he was 17 there had always been pain, whether in his heart from losing Zelda, his mind from the heavy weight he carried as Hero, or on his body. Blood filled his life for 18 months after Ghirahim kidnapped Zelda from the skies after the Wing Ceremony, and it had never really left him.

Even as Link shook with forgotten tears, his hand crept out to rub at old wounds. At a scar up his leg, an awkward deformation on his side where a broken rib healed incorrectly, a white scar on his temple where his hair had not grown back. Link rubbed impatiently at his eyes, and then became aware of the smell again, from when he woke.

What was that? It smelled gross, and then savory all at once. He raised his head, wiped at his nose, sniffed sharply, and glanced at Zelda. He saw now that behind her was a tray of food, she must have brought it in when she found him consumed by the nightmare. That explained the mouthwatering scents of egg and meat, but not the sour that assaulted his nose.

With any shreds of dignity left breaking at the seams, Link looked down on himself, and closed his eyes tightly.

The nightmare ...

The nightmare was no excuse to be wetting the bed.

Link wiped away two more tears from his eyes, and choked on shame even as Zelda just looked at him. Stared helplessly at her broken hero, who fought water, fire, and weapon for her. And now suffered from the cruel fate of having to remember all of it.

And that was what hurt the most. All this time that Link fought for her, what had Zelda done? Traveled safely in the companionship of Impa, slept for thousands of years even as Link was imprisoned and thrown from cliffs and faced death a hundred times over.

Link had been told that those with the Spirit of the Hero held an unbreakable spirit, were the great embodiment of Courage.

Clearly once his role was fulfilled the Goddess had no need to leave him with such gifts. Now he was little more than an overgrown infant, wetting himself, suffering dark nightmares, crying at the slightest thought of an old challenge.

It wasn't just Ghirahim and Demise either, it was everything. Every temple, task, and trial Link faced was etched into his memory. Every sharp slice of a bokoblin's blade, every trashing tail of a lizalfos, every fucked off rematch of his greatest fears reincarnated by the thunder dragon like it was some kind of joke.

But that hadn't been the thunder dragon's intention, of course. And Zelda hadn't meant to abandon him. Was this all in his head, were all of these clinging memories his own fault?

And anyway, if he hadn't done this, just imagine what would have happened. Link closed his eyes, and swallowed hard, clasping his hands as if in prayer.

"First, I will take my time bludgeoning you, and when I grow bored of it, I will drive you to the edge and deliver a last strike to send you falling to your doom!"

Yes, Link thought, much better that he win and suffer such cruel memories, than lose at the hands of Demise or his servant.

"I'll delight in casting your body into this pit and snuffing out the flame of your life! Your broken body will serve as fine sustenance for the demon king!"

Much better indeed.

"Link." Zelda whispered, "What can I do? I'm sorry…I'm so sorry." There were tears in her eyes, her hands wrapped around his arm but he pushed her away. Link stood up sharply and lurched from the room, clawing a hand through his hair. Why could he remember everything so well? Why did these thoughts pierce him? Why, even though he'd won, was he being destroyed so mercilessly by enemies that continued to taunt him night and day.

"There is one tiny thing I lack. Namely, mercy"

He had meant that to refer to how he would kill Link. And it seemed Ghirahim would get his wish, alive or dead. This, these raging nightmares and plagued thoughts in a peaceful world at ease, this was truly the most merciless way to kill him.

Link stumbled into the restroom, pulling off soiled clothes he crumpled them into a corner and stared at himself in the mirror.

Since he and Zelda decided to live on the Surface, they thought it practically disrespectful to live in the temple so they built a small home just next to it. Now Link stared at his naked body reflected at himself, trying to understand what he was supposed to think of himself.

Skinny, he was too skinny. He had been eating less and less, every night since Demise's defeat, because what he did eat he only threw up late in the delirium of reeling nightmares. His body looked empty, pocketed with scars and burns and muscles once taut and lean that had grown loose and shivered like that of an aged veteran. An old man at the age of 19. Link reached a hand out to touch the mirror, as if proving to himself the dead blue eyes were his own. The lined scars on his leg matched where the ice in his dreams had clawed out his flesh.

The old burn print on his forearm lined up with where Ghirahim grasped him in the depths of his nightmare.

Would his own body always haunt him?

Link fell to his knees, pressed his other hand against the glass, and searched his face for any sign of recognition.

This did not seem fair.

To be killed so openly, so horribly, the deconstruction of his own mind. For a fleeting moment, Link wished for Ghirahim to come back and kill him however he wanted. Because at least that would end sooner than this.

And then, as the reality of that wish sunk in, tears brimmed and soaked out of Link's eyes again. He stayed there in the bathroom, throat choking on his own sobs, open palm clinging to his own reflection. Broken mind looking for respite, where there would be none.