A/N: A fic request from my Tumblr that totally spiraled out of control. I don't even know how this happened it just sort of vomited itself out and I love it. T_T Hope you guys like!

One

He knelt on the cracked, worn steps, where a thousand generations of his ancestors had knelt before him, and offered his wrists to be bound. The ropes dug deep, tied deftly in the dark, as the voice spoke the ritual words that had been spoken so many times before, and yet felt as though they could only ever have been meant for him.

"You see her face in your dreams. You feel her heart beating beside yours. You hear her breathe when you listen. Has it always been?"

"It has always been."

"Do you offer yourself to her? Do you bind your soul in eternal servitude to hers?"

The word leapt up into his mouth even as his body trembled with a thrill of fear—because eternity was no exaggeration, and no amount of devotion could impel a mere mortal to swear to that without terror.

"Yes."

Hands pressed him down, down, until he was bent with his face against the stone, and held him there. He flinched as the knife bit into the tender flesh above his eye, and the hands held him tighter, and he swallowed pain and doubt as they carved three triangles into his brow and a teardrop beneath. Then they pulled him up by his wrists, forward, and slid the blade between his hands. Blood ran into his eye, rendering him half blind. The hands let him go, leaving him alone in the dark, held aloft by the blade hovering at the rope.

"So let it always be."

The knife pulled up and ripped through his restraints, and old magic flooded him, binding him to something, pulling him somewhere else, so cripplingly that his legs gave out. Her name filled him as his knees hit the stone and spilled out of his mouth.

"Zelda."

The Elders waited as he trembled and gasped, as he tried to crawl out from under the weight that would never leave him for as long as he lived. Suddenly her heartbeat was stronger. Her breathing was louder. He clapped his hands over his ears and screamed through his teeth as it drowned him out, as he felt his own heart, his own breath, less and less, and fragile, withered hands took his wrists.

"Go to her," the Elder whispered. "There is no peace for you without her now."

The glow of a waxing crescent moon spilled over the stone, and he turned from looming, blood red eyes and ran straight through it into darkness.

He chased after the stabbing pain the second heartbeat had become in his ribs, the deafening sound of her every breath, for two days and two nights. Her heart finally started pulsing normally again as he neared the castle, whitewashed like a grave in moonlight, and summoned him quietly upwards. He scaled the walls and spires in the shadows, panting towards the promise of the face he had dreamed of for as long as he could remember.

He slid the window over the balcony open and slipped inside, quiet as a whisper.

He stopped to listen. Her heartbeat was steady and her breathing slow. She was sound asleep. He moved again, crossing the room with a sputtering heart and trembling hands, until he was beside her bed. It was the strangest thing, hearing her breathe aloud as she slept, watching the blankets rise and fall with the sound, and still hearing it, so much louder and so much deeper, from somewhere within.

He almost reached out to touch her, to brush away a strand of golden hair that had tumbled across her face, but he held back. He would be her shadow for the rest of his life, and perhaps beyond. Such a pointless indulgence should at least be earned. And he hadn't done a thing for her. Not yet. Once he made sure she was safe, once he made sure she was protected, and happy, and wanting for absolutely nothing, then, maybe, he would give himself the very great pleasure of whispering her name aloud when she couldn't hear it, or touching her pillow after she had turned in her sleep, just so he could feel her warmth.

He melted into the shadows and began his long night vigil, waiting for her eyes to open with the light—desperate to see if they were the same, flawless green he had seen in his dreams.