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Link woke with his jaw clamped shut, his breath a frantic push and pull of air that whistled between clenched teeth. Vivid images spun through his mind beyond the bounds of dreaming—claws bursting through the knuckles of hands that were no longer hands, fur rippling across his arms as he hunched onto all fours, lips curling around sharp, snarling teeth grown too big for his mouth—yet as the pounding of his heart marked the passage of time, those lingering impressions faded. Then there was only Link, alone in his darkened bedroom, sweaty sheets twisted in anxious knots beneath him.
One last shudder, and his final shreds of resistance melted like mist in the early morning air—a failure as shameful as it was predictable, though he would feel that shame in full later. For now…
Jolting up out of bed, he started to dress: a hasty, haphazard process. Link had kicked his boots off carelessly the night before, and he didn't spare the time to search for them now, abandoning them wherever they lay along with his missing gloves and ever elusive hat. In this light, he could barely even see his hand in front of his face, though Link didn't spend the seconds it would take to light a candle, either. The sun might be only a thought on the horizon, but when morning finally came, it would come quickly.
Sure enough, by the time Link eased his front door open, he could just make out the shapes of buildings and trees looming over him, cast cool and blue against a sky that was not quite night. A bustling hub of activity and purpose by daylight, at this hour, the small settlement stood a still and silent witness to his actions. Judging them?
Tiptoeing over his own doorstep on bare feet, Link's eyes strayed out of guilty habit towards Zelda's window—the only point of light in a sea of dark houses. She was often awake at this hour, he knew, sleep evading her as much as him. That golden glow beckoned Link through clouded glass, a beacon of hope and light and second chances. He could still change his mind, knock at her door instead, and…
Link's jaw clamped down tighter, and he shivered, blaming it on the shirt and trousers barely shielding him from the morning air. Turning from that window, he slipped down the path like a patch of blue shadow himself, reaching the edge of the nearby woods and crossing that threshold without a backward glance.
In darkness, Link knew which way to go—knew these woods like a second home now, which on some days he found comforting, and on other days chilled him to his core. He passed the familiar shapes of trees and mushrooms and delved in deeper, clambering over fallen logs he’d pushed around himself to make the place more navigable and feeling bark scrape up the soles of his feet. Birds chattered incessantly in the branches overhead, and the snuffling sound from a patch of grass nearby was a sure sign of a Kikwi poking its beak through the dirt in search of breakfast, which Link skirted nimbly around. His ears stayed pricked for the rustle of leaves that would give away a hidden Deku Shrub, but none appeared to attack him. Nothing ever did in these strange morning hours.
By the time it grew bright enough to make out the path, reds and greens emerging out of the foliage to undermine that monohued blue, Link had already abandoned it. His feet still knew the way, even if he did not, breaking into an anxious trot. The limbs of trees twisted more wildly around him now, their unfamiliar shapes hooking at Link’s clothes from beneath a rising shroud of mist, and in the back of his mind, he wondered if turning around was even an option now. He still didn’t know how he found his way here every time, or how he’d find his way back in the end, and more than half expected that such blind faith might one be his eventual undoing. Another part of him loved not knowing.
More colors blossomed through the dimly lit mist, and Link started to run, leaping cleanly over hooked roots and thorned branches that threatened to tear up his heels. His heart pounded drumlike in his ears, throbbing up through his stiff jaw, out of sync with the pounding of his feet. Those twin rhythms beat through him again, and again, and again…
And then it was over. One second Link was running, and the next he’d stopped, his teeth aching from the effort of clenching them shut. Shivers wracking through him, Link stared warily up at the clearing surrounding him and… waited.
Nothing moved, the mist that had eddied up at his arrival settling back around Link's feet, and a familiar anxiety began to worm its way through him. He had always come before, and often late—he liked to make an entrance—but did that mean he always would?
If he didn't…
Link’s thoughts flew back to that candle in a window: a beacon still despite its distance, but an empty one. If he could trace his steps out of this forest again, back down the path to her door, then Zelda would let him in. They’d done it all before, many times. Link would sit on her bed, and she would hold his hands while he tried and failed to push words through his lips, rendered silent by the strength of these dreams that were more than dreams… these visions that stole his voice.
And Zelda… she would be so understanding. She would bite her lip, and hold him tight, and think that she knew… well, everything. The goddess had accounted for every twist and turn his journey would take and planned his life accordingly, and so Zelda knew every bit of it. She even thought she knew what dreams harrowed his sleep, if only because Link had never managed to tell her otherwise—the sort of nightmares he should have had after the apocalyptic monster he'd faced.
The wind picked up around him, diamonds flickering at its edges, and Link's shivering turned to shudders. Zelda didn't know about this.
"The early bird returns." A soft voice floated through the clearing, resonating as if from everywhere at once. If Link shook any harder, he thought his muscles might tear themselves apart. "Quivering like a leaf again, I see. No, that won't do at all."
One unseen finger brushed along his neck, curling around a single damp lock of hair at its nape… and that was all it took. Link collapsed, the shuddering tension rushing out of him with a sigh, and Ghirahim was there to catch him.
"Shhhhh…"
Ghirahim hushed him, though Link had yet to say a word, guiding Link in towards himself as they sank together to rest against soft earth. Cunning fingers maneuvered to claim Link’s hair more thoroughly, carding through each sweat-soaked strand with delicate attention.
“Somehow, you are even less put together than usual,” Ghirahim reproved him in a teasing, singsong voice, dark eyes flitting over Link as if to catalog every missing piece of uniform. Pinching the tip of Link's ear, he tugged playfully. “I don't know if I've ever seen you without that horrid excuse for a hat.”
For his own part, Link could say nothing, though maybe his rising flush said it all for him. If human flesh could melt, it must feel like this. Caving in towards Ghirahim’s chest, Link buried his head in the center of where the diamond cut of his outfit exposed smooth skin, averting his gaze even as he leaned in to every offered touch—though he didn't expect Ghirahim would tolerate such cowardice for long.
Sure enough, after another lazy stroke through hair, Ghirahim’s fingers dug in and, with an insistent tug, brought Link's eyes up to meet the dark void of his gaze.
"Enough of that," he murmured. "Tell me all about it. What nighttime visions have you stumbling through the Lost Woods into my arms once more?"
Lost Woods. Ghirahim always spoke those words with significance, like a name. Maybe it was. Link could think of no better name for a place like this.
He swallowed thickly and tried to speak.
"I…"
It was still no use, which Ghirahim thankfully understood. Pulling Link more securely against his lap—how had he ended up there?—the path of his caressing hand shifted from his hair to loop up and around his neck. The gesture might have felt innately threatening once, like drawing out a noose. It should have felt threatening now.
Instead, Link felt his skin tingle along that finger's path, pebbling up beneath his shirt in a way that didn't feel threatening at all. Swallowing again, he cleared his throat.
"There was a… mirror," he pushed out hoarsely, staring up at Ghirahim's white-painted lips and through them as he tried to remember. For all the horror of watching his own body transform into something he could only describe as bestial, the image of that shattered mirror lingered with a deeper, more familiar sense of loss. "A broken mirror. She broke it when she left so—so nobody could ever—” Licking his lips, Link thought that maybe he should start somewhere else. Somewhere closer to the beginning, at least. “I lived in a house… in a tree, I think? That part was nice—living closer to the sky…"
Halting, disconnected, and all out of order, the story emerged reluctantly from between Link's lips like drawn out poison, burning as it left but leaving a sense of numb relief in its wake. Trapped in his mind, it was a full heroic quest contained within the bound a single night, a harrowing experience with unsettling implications magnified by the fact that it was only one of many. Each night brought yet another life to live… and another… and another—but at least speaking the visions aloud robbed them of some of their power. Spoken aloud, they were only words.
"The sword didn't show up until later, I think... but it's always there." The sword was always there, no matter the vision, and it almost always showed up later… and suddenly, Link remembered where he'd heard the name Lost Woods. "Of course, Fi wasn't—she's never—”
Ghirahim, on the other hand, drank those words down like sweet wine, giving them nothing less than his rapt attention. At first, Link had worried that Ghirahim kept them tucked away in his mind somewhere, storing his words against the future for some nefarious use. Maybe he did—maybe Ghirahim had some use for Link's dreams (Predictions? Visions?) that he still didn’t understand—but they came out of him with so little coherence that Link had finally laid that fear to rest, letting others take its place. If Ghirahim could somehow make sense of it all, then maybe he deserved to make use of it.
Still, there were times that Link wished he could skip parts of the story, whenever Ghirahim’s attention grew a little too… intense, but the full thing demanded to be told.
“Being a wolf was… worse when I couldn't control it. Better when I could. It was… different being able to smell like that, like some unseen world opening up—”
The demon's fingers moved constantly as Link spoke, flowing up and down Link's spine, wandering along his face, and, whenever Link's flow of words halted, looping back around his neck as if to uncork them again. The ease with which he did so gnawed at Link, one suspicion among many that would eat at his thoughts in the daylight until nighttime brought that familiar resolution, broken each morning upon waking: never again. It only made sense that the hand that unstoppered his voice when nothing else was able to might have stopped up that flow in the first place.
That Link made his way here each morning through methods more sinister than mysterious. That the same fingers that soothed him so diligently trailed sticky red thread from their tips, binding Link in ways he might never fully fathom until it was too late…
“—but it wasn't really Zelda. He'd turned her into… basically a puppet—”
…And Goddess above, he really was caught, wasn't he? The Chosen Hero of the Goddess, bearer of the Triforce and savior of the skies—but at the core of his existence, trapped, powerless to escape his place in the web of… Demise, maybe, or the goddess, or even fate itself—
And here in this moment, a gadfly ensnared in this smaller web of Ghirahim's inscrutable design, with the demon at its center twitching the threads that bound him. Pulling him, calling him… or was he? Was it just easier for Link to imagine himself in a trance, as if the impulse he felt to come here was all pull and no push?
Because if the only draw of these misty woods came from unburdening himself, then none of this really mattered in the end. Link could come to these woods again and again and leave each time feeling lighter, the trajectory of his life unaltered however many times he returned—except…
“Very good.” A soothing, satisfied murmur broke through Link's inner turmoil, and his first thought was that his own voice must have clammed up once more. He blinked, the pale face above him swimming back into sharp focus. “Very well done, Link. You sang your song so sweetly… but it is enough for one night. Time to rest, little hero.”
Only then did Link reach the final realization that he had stopped speaking, not because his throat had closed against the telling, but because there was nothing left to tell. It was all over… for one more night, at least.
Relief slackened his limbs, though with Ghirahim's frame so entwined with his own, it made little difference. When the rim of a bottle pressed against Link's lips, he regarded it with neither suspicion nor surprise, tilting his head back instead to let water flow down his parched throat. That strange hero who would trespass the barrier between shadow and light felt more distant with each passing moment, settling in the back recesses of his mind as any normal dream might to be forgotten and remembered in parts—
—And in the vacant space left in his wake, in the faint breath that barely had time to gasp between Link's lips as the bottle vanished into nothing, Ghirahim slipped in.
“And have you not earned your rest?” the demon asked, suddenly fierce. Pressing his head insistently against Link’s as if he might meld them both together, his dark hands finally ceased their perpetual caress to cup Link’s face. “Will you not earn it one thousand times over before this is done? Ten thousand times over? More?”
Though the spirit of his enemy's sword had no heartbeat that Link could observe, his own pounded quickly enough between them to make up the difference. Closing his eyes, he slipped briefly into the fantasy that his own heart could truly be enough… that Ghirahim could be so indignant on his behalf without ulterior motive.
“You know, if you wished to escape it all…” Ghirahim’s voice lowered further, a bare, seductive whisper that Link couldn’t help but hear clearly. “All those obligations that bind you to labor for others with no fulfillment… no satisfaction…” Despite himself, Link raised his hands in a gesture that mirrored Ghirahim’s, holding the other man’s face and feeling it tighten in some unseen expression. “If duty binds your soul through the ages, then why must it constrain you now, with your heroic mandate fulfilled? Stay here with me, and…”
Link wished suddenly that he had his hat, his boots, his tunic and chainmail and bracers and gloves—all those trappings of a hero that might have reminded him of who he was that he’d so carelessly left behind. This was the corrosive temptation that made these daily visits so dangerous… the offer that grew harder each time to reject. The offer that told him…
“For this lifetime, at least, you could be free.”
And this was the lie. Whatever Ghirahim had to offer him here, it wasn’t freedom—but neither was the life he returned to each morning, blinking against the sun at the forest’s edge. It was a life he’d had a hand in building, it was true—Link couldn’t deny his own role in it all—but built with the desires of others placed so far above his own that it fit him like overlarge armor: chafing, restrictive, and so, so heavy. If Link had thought once that his role as the hero ended with Demise’s death, he’d learned soon enough that the expectations accompanying that role never really left… and as had been the case for his entire life, it seemed that once more, Link was only barely enough.
Did he even do the good he thought he did by staying, or was his increasingly evident exhaustion with his own life only another source of pain for those he wanted most to protect?
“Why?” Link whispered, his voice cracking, yet audible. He’d asked as much before, never satisfied with the answer. “Why do you come here every time? Why would you want me to…?” What? What would happen next if Link ever said ‘yes’?
What would it mean to be caught in this web, consumed?
As if in answer, Ghirahim drew back—but only by a fraction. Only enough to place lips where his head had rested before, pausing there only a moment before moving down, mouthing along Link’s jaw to press against his lips.
Link closed his eyes again, as if he considered this answer enough—and behind closed eyes, saw the light shift from darkened blue to sudden, vivid orange. The sun had finally risen, its first rays setting the mist aflame with the strength of a thousand candles.
Breaking away, Link gave the only possible response.
“No.” His voice cracked around the denial, so he shook his head weakly… though he surprised himself by adding, “Not… not today.”
His heart thudded twice, uneasy.
“Not… today,” Ghirahim repeated, something triumphant shimmering in his voice that Link couldn’t find the will to correct. "Very well."
Link expected Ghirahim to withdraw then—he always did after Link’s denial—but instead he pressed in closer, swallowing the light to steal one more kiss that scraped against Link’s lips.
“I look forward to the day.”
And then he was gone.
Blinking, Link staggered to find himself standing at the forest’s edge again, shading his face against a light that was far too bright for eyes adjusted to the darkness. With no memory of the return journey, he was home. He’d made it through another night.
Running his tongue along his lip and tasting blood, Link waited for his better judgment to take hold—for his fears to resurface, and for that repetitive resolution of never again to rise up from his soul.
It never came.