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Entry tags:
On Wishing
Fandom: Zelda: ALBW
Characters: Ravio, Hilda
Word count: ~1800
Warnings: Ravio's very existence is an embarrassment to everyone. This also gets a lot soppier than my usual. :T
Notes: AU. An extension/follow-on to the one where Ravio shows up too late. That one was Morri's fault and so is this.
Ravio was afraid of a lot of things. Always had been. Couldn’t really help it. His mind just kept spinning away, seeing threats in everything and inventing more threats if the supply ran low. It wasn’t a bad strategy in such a hostile world. Anticipate everything, and anticipate that everything is gonna be terrible, and maybe you can get out unhurt.
He’d been afraid of a thousand things, coming back to Lorule. He’d thought of a thousand ways things could go wrong.
This wasn’t one of them.
The ground heaved with the aftershocks of a great magical clash. The castle walls groaned and popped as the stones shifted. And there was Link, a little singed but all right, and there was Zelda, holding his arm and blinking as she readjusted to life in three dimensions. And there, on the floor…
Something dreadful. Something it had never occurred to him to dread.
Princess Hilda of Lorule, motionless and going cold, an arrow in her chest, blood on her lips, her eyes still open -
So angry, in the end, and so alone.
He’d meant to be here. He’d meant to spare her that. He’d never thought - the possibility had never crossed his mind -
You failed.
His ears were ringing. He could see Princess Zelda’s mouth moving, but he didn’t hear a word. It didn’t matter. The walls were shaking. All of Lorule would fall into the abyss within a fortnight, but the castle wouldn’t even last that long. Everything was coming down.
He went to Hilda. He knelt down at her side, snapped off the arrow where it jutted between her ribs, folded her hands -
He had meant to close her eyes next, but his own hands were shaking too badly now, his own eyes wouldn’t focus -
“ - not safe here,” she said, behind him. Zelda. This woman from another world, this woman whose face was Hilda’s but whose heart still beat -
He said, “You better get back to Hyrule, then.” His voice sounded flat and tinny. He didn’t look back. “The bracelet might not be strong enough to take you both, but there’s other ways. Sheerow can show you.” There was a sound and a white fluttering next to him. He didn’t look at that, either. “Keep an eye on Mr. Hero for me, okay, buddy? I’ll -” I’ll follow you in a bit, he almost said. But he wouldn’t insult Sheerow’s intelligence.
He stared at Hilda.
You did this.
If you had stayed with her -
If you’d come back sooner -
At some point the ceiling began to crack, drizzling small stones and mortar. Presumably the others were gone by then. He didn’t check. He didn’t begrudge them their world of light, or what they’d had to do - but he had no desire to see or speak to Link again. Hilda had been in the wrong, but she could have been saved. It could have gone another way.
But it hadn’t. It was over. There was no sense leaving this place only to die in a few weeks when Lorule finally vanished. The best part of it was already gone.
He hadn’t stayed with her, when she lived and her kingdom was falling apart. He would now.
Hilda took a breath. For some reason, she expected it to hurt. For some reason, it didn’t.
She was lying down, and her eyes were closed. She didn’t remember going to sleep. She remembered … Link.
She opened her eyes, but her vision was blurry and the light hurt them. Under her breath she muttered, “Did I fail?”
Something rustled up above, and a shadow fell over her. She squinted upward - into a pair of bright green eyes she could swear she knew. She hadn’t seen that face in weeks, but as the fog of sleep lifted, she realized. “Ravio,” she said, “what are you doing here?”
Her one-time advisor made a sound that was not a word. The line of his mouth pulled tight until it went crooked under the strain, and he blinked rapidly. “I, uh -”
“And what in the world are you wearing?”
Before she quite knew what was happening, he had thrown his arms around her and pulled her up into a tight hug. He drew in a ragged gasp, close to her ear, and then a shudder ran through him as he began to weep.
It was not at all an appropriate way for a commoner to handle a princess. She did not correct him at once. It was years since anyone had dared touch her at all - the ritual bowing and scraping and kissing of rings didn’t count. This was so far outside the realm of the possible that she could not imagine how to react.
“I’m so sorry,” he choked. “I shoulda - I shoulda been here. I mean, everything’s fine now, but that’s no thanks to me, is it? I just - all I did -” And at this point he completely ceased to be intelligible.
She pushed against his shoulder, and he loosened his death grip a fraction. “What do you mean, ‘everything’s fine?’ What happened? I remember that Link came to fight Yuga -” She frowned. “And Yuga turned on me -”
He took a deep breath and swallowed audibly. “Yeah. There’s a lot to explain, but - gimme a second, I can fill you in.” He made a few more equally noisy efforts to collect himself, then said, “Oh my gods, look at me. Getting snot on your dress. As if you hadn’t been through enough today, right?”
“You were about to tell me what I’ve been through today.”
“Yeah, I - I was, wasn’t I? Right. One super concise and satisfying explanation, coming up.” He let go of her and leaned back. His explanation was not concise. With Ravio they never were. But his account was uncharacteristically halting - the story of how and why he had left, how he’d found Link, how he’d decided to come back for the end, was punctuated by frequent apologies and long silences where he fumbled for words and looked anywhere but at her.
“But it was too little, too late,” he said. He looked down and gulped. His fingers twisted together in his lap. Eventually he said, in a voice void of any feeling, “When I got here, you were already dead. Link… killed you.”
“Then why am I here? I remember that he shot me, but - you must have been mistaken. It can’t have been fatal.”
He shook his head. “It was. You were - look, just trust me, I’ve been here for… a while. You were gone.”
Hilda frowned and looked around the chamber. “Where are they?”
“Gone back to Hyrule.”
“With the Triforce?”
“With the Triforce.” A thought struck him. “Do you think… maybe they wished you back to life?”
“I don’t know why they would. I tried to destroy their world.” She looked over Ravio’s shoulder, toward the door through which Link had come in to challenge Yuga and then her. “I am their enemy. Surely even the light world - even Hyrule could never produce such fools.”
“Are they fools?” he said. “Yeah, maybe, I dunno. But…” His expression went distant. “They’re good people, Mr. Hero and - sorry, I mean Link - and Princess Zelda. I think they could see - uh, with all due respect, ‘cause I’m not trying to intrude or anything - they could tell how much you were suffering, and -”
“And if I was dead, any suffering was over.” She looked down, feeling a stirring of cold anger. “And instead they would bring me back? To a world that will still die? Is that their revenge, then - denying me even the opportunity to die for my -”
“Your Grace,” he said, and grabbed her hands. His desertion, she thought, had made him terribly presumptuous. “Please don’t say that. Just because the world’s going to end, that doesn’t mean everything is meaningless. There’s still - as long as we did our best, then -”
“If our best wasn’t enough, what does it matter?” She shook him off and stood. “I was given the care of this kingdom, and -” Something caught her eye, beyond the cracks in the walls. She stopped cold. “Ravio.”
“Your Grace?”
“Have you ever seen such a sky?” The thin slice of it she could see from here was blue and brilliant, a color she couldn’t remember seeing in all her life.
He got up and followed her gaze, and after a brief hesitation said, “In Hyrule, yeah.”
And she knew. Or she hoped. Or she wanted to hope, if it weren’t so impossible. “Did anything else change while I was dead?”
“Uh, I have to admit, I wasn’t paying that much attention -”
She grabbed his arm and started running.
She had been staring at it for several minutes and still could not make herself understand. Last she’d looked at Ravio, he had been grinning like a fool and doing some weird little dance; she had chosen not to acknowledge him further, as it was embarrassing to watch.
But the fact remained…
The fact remained that this was the Triforce.
“Why would they do this?” she said.
Somewhere behind her, Ravio got ahold of himself. “Like I said - they’re good kids.”
Hilda looked down. “And I would have killed them to take what was theirs. And they knew that. How could anyone…?”
“All right,” said Ravio, “way I see it - not that you’re asking me, so I should probably just shut my mouth, but what the hey - we both screwed up. In a huge way. But we’re getting another chance, so we should use it, right? And not ask too many questions?”
She looked back at him, frowning. “Perhaps.”
“Perhaps?” He threw his arms wide. “Everything is beautiful and nobody’s dead! What’s so ‘perhaps’ about that? Doesn’t it make you wanna go run around in a field or something?” He paused, and after a moment lowered his arms. “Wait, scratch that. The fields are probably still full of skulls. Bad idea. But anyway -”
He kept nattering on, as if he had never had a care in the world. She watched him a while longer - though she could barely follow a word he was saying - but she turned back, ultimately, to the new Triforce.
For all her plans, she had never known what came next. She had never thought about survival - about going on to rule a world that was not dying.
If this was not a dream, there was much work to be done, and a great deal to learn.
“If this is not a dream,” she said under her breath, “then know this, Zelda of Hyrule. I will speak to you again.” She looked up at the sky, so bright and clear it made her head ache, and then out over the hills, where the cracks in the landscape had ceased to bleed so dark. “Maybe by then I’ll understand why you did this. Maybe by then I’ll know if I should thank you.”
Characters: Ravio, Hilda
Word count: ~1800
Warnings: Ravio's very existence is an embarrassment to everyone. This also gets a lot soppier than my usual. :T
Notes: AU. An extension/follow-on to the one where Ravio shows up too late. That one was Morri's fault and so is this.
Ravio was afraid of a lot of things. Always had been. Couldn’t really help it. His mind just kept spinning away, seeing threats in everything and inventing more threats if the supply ran low. It wasn’t a bad strategy in such a hostile world. Anticipate everything, and anticipate that everything is gonna be terrible, and maybe you can get out unhurt.
He’d been afraid of a thousand things, coming back to Lorule. He’d thought of a thousand ways things could go wrong.
This wasn’t one of them.
The ground heaved with the aftershocks of a great magical clash. The castle walls groaned and popped as the stones shifted. And there was Link, a little singed but all right, and there was Zelda, holding his arm and blinking as she readjusted to life in three dimensions. And there, on the floor…
Something dreadful. Something it had never occurred to him to dread.
Princess Hilda of Lorule, motionless and going cold, an arrow in her chest, blood on her lips, her eyes still open -
So angry, in the end, and so alone.
He’d meant to be here. He’d meant to spare her that. He’d never thought - the possibility had never crossed his mind -
You failed.
His ears were ringing. He could see Princess Zelda’s mouth moving, but he didn’t hear a word. It didn’t matter. The walls were shaking. All of Lorule would fall into the abyss within a fortnight, but the castle wouldn’t even last that long. Everything was coming down.
He went to Hilda. He knelt down at her side, snapped off the arrow where it jutted between her ribs, folded her hands -
He had meant to close her eyes next, but his own hands were shaking too badly now, his own eyes wouldn’t focus -
“ - not safe here,” she said, behind him. Zelda. This woman from another world, this woman whose face was Hilda’s but whose heart still beat -
He said, “You better get back to Hyrule, then.” His voice sounded flat and tinny. He didn’t look back. “The bracelet might not be strong enough to take you both, but there’s other ways. Sheerow can show you.” There was a sound and a white fluttering next to him. He didn’t look at that, either. “Keep an eye on Mr. Hero for me, okay, buddy? I’ll -” I’ll follow you in a bit, he almost said. But he wouldn’t insult Sheerow’s intelligence.
He stared at Hilda.
You did this.
If you had stayed with her -
If you’d come back sooner -
At some point the ceiling began to crack, drizzling small stones and mortar. Presumably the others were gone by then. He didn’t check. He didn’t begrudge them their world of light, or what they’d had to do - but he had no desire to see or speak to Link again. Hilda had been in the wrong, but she could have been saved. It could have gone another way.
But it hadn’t. It was over. There was no sense leaving this place only to die in a few weeks when Lorule finally vanished. The best part of it was already gone.
He hadn’t stayed with her, when she lived and her kingdom was falling apart. He would now.
Hilda took a breath. For some reason, she expected it to hurt. For some reason, it didn’t.
She was lying down, and her eyes were closed. She didn’t remember going to sleep. She remembered … Link.
She opened her eyes, but her vision was blurry and the light hurt them. Under her breath she muttered, “Did I fail?”
Something rustled up above, and a shadow fell over her. She squinted upward - into a pair of bright green eyes she could swear she knew. She hadn’t seen that face in weeks, but as the fog of sleep lifted, she realized. “Ravio,” she said, “what are you doing here?”
Her one-time advisor made a sound that was not a word. The line of his mouth pulled tight until it went crooked under the strain, and he blinked rapidly. “I, uh -”
“And what in the world are you wearing?”
Before she quite knew what was happening, he had thrown his arms around her and pulled her up into a tight hug. He drew in a ragged gasp, close to her ear, and then a shudder ran through him as he began to weep.
It was not at all an appropriate way for a commoner to handle a princess. She did not correct him at once. It was years since anyone had dared touch her at all - the ritual bowing and scraping and kissing of rings didn’t count. This was so far outside the realm of the possible that she could not imagine how to react.
“I’m so sorry,” he choked. “I shoulda - I shoulda been here. I mean, everything’s fine now, but that’s no thanks to me, is it? I just - all I did -” And at this point he completely ceased to be intelligible.
She pushed against his shoulder, and he loosened his death grip a fraction. “What do you mean, ‘everything’s fine?’ What happened? I remember that Link came to fight Yuga -” She frowned. “And Yuga turned on me -”
He took a deep breath and swallowed audibly. “Yeah. There’s a lot to explain, but - gimme a second, I can fill you in.” He made a few more equally noisy efforts to collect himself, then said, “Oh my gods, look at me. Getting snot on your dress. As if you hadn’t been through enough today, right?”
“You were about to tell me what I’ve been through today.”
“Yeah, I - I was, wasn’t I? Right. One super concise and satisfying explanation, coming up.” He let go of her and leaned back. His explanation was not concise. With Ravio they never were. But his account was uncharacteristically halting - the story of how and why he had left, how he’d found Link, how he’d decided to come back for the end, was punctuated by frequent apologies and long silences where he fumbled for words and looked anywhere but at her.
“But it was too little, too late,” he said. He looked down and gulped. His fingers twisted together in his lap. Eventually he said, in a voice void of any feeling, “When I got here, you were already dead. Link… killed you.”
“Then why am I here? I remember that he shot me, but - you must have been mistaken. It can’t have been fatal.”
He shook his head. “It was. You were - look, just trust me, I’ve been here for… a while. You were gone.”
Hilda frowned and looked around the chamber. “Where are they?”
“Gone back to Hyrule.”
“With the Triforce?”
“With the Triforce.” A thought struck him. “Do you think… maybe they wished you back to life?”
“I don’t know why they would. I tried to destroy their world.” She looked over Ravio’s shoulder, toward the door through which Link had come in to challenge Yuga and then her. “I am their enemy. Surely even the light world - even Hyrule could never produce such fools.”
“Are they fools?” he said. “Yeah, maybe, I dunno. But…” His expression went distant. “They’re good people, Mr. Hero and - sorry, I mean Link - and Princess Zelda. I think they could see - uh, with all due respect, ‘cause I’m not trying to intrude or anything - they could tell how much you were suffering, and -”
“And if I was dead, any suffering was over.” She looked down, feeling a stirring of cold anger. “And instead they would bring me back? To a world that will still die? Is that their revenge, then - denying me even the opportunity to die for my -”
“Your Grace,” he said, and grabbed her hands. His desertion, she thought, had made him terribly presumptuous. “Please don’t say that. Just because the world’s going to end, that doesn’t mean everything is meaningless. There’s still - as long as we did our best, then -”
“If our best wasn’t enough, what does it matter?” She shook him off and stood. “I was given the care of this kingdom, and -” Something caught her eye, beyond the cracks in the walls. She stopped cold. “Ravio.”
“Your Grace?”
“Have you ever seen such a sky?” The thin slice of it she could see from here was blue and brilliant, a color she couldn’t remember seeing in all her life.
He got up and followed her gaze, and after a brief hesitation said, “In Hyrule, yeah.”
And she knew. Or she hoped. Or she wanted to hope, if it weren’t so impossible. “Did anything else change while I was dead?”
“Uh, I have to admit, I wasn’t paying that much attention -”
She grabbed his arm and started running.
She had been staring at it for several minutes and still could not make herself understand. Last she’d looked at Ravio, he had been grinning like a fool and doing some weird little dance; she had chosen not to acknowledge him further, as it was embarrassing to watch.
But the fact remained…
The fact remained that this was the Triforce.
“Why would they do this?” she said.
Somewhere behind her, Ravio got ahold of himself. “Like I said - they’re good kids.”
Hilda looked down. “And I would have killed them to take what was theirs. And they knew that. How could anyone…?”
“All right,” said Ravio, “way I see it - not that you’re asking me, so I should probably just shut my mouth, but what the hey - we both screwed up. In a huge way. But we’re getting another chance, so we should use it, right? And not ask too many questions?”
She looked back at him, frowning. “Perhaps.”
“Perhaps?” He threw his arms wide. “Everything is beautiful and nobody’s dead! What’s so ‘perhaps’ about that? Doesn’t it make you wanna go run around in a field or something?” He paused, and after a moment lowered his arms. “Wait, scratch that. The fields are probably still full of skulls. Bad idea. But anyway -”
He kept nattering on, as if he had never had a care in the world. She watched him a while longer - though she could barely follow a word he was saying - but she turned back, ultimately, to the new Triforce.
For all her plans, she had never known what came next. She had never thought about survival - about going on to rule a world that was not dying.
If this was not a dream, there was much work to be done, and a great deal to learn.
“If this is not a dream,” she said under her breath, “then know this, Zelda of Hyrule. I will speak to you again.” She looked up at the sky, so bright and clear it made her head ache, and then out over the hills, where the cracks in the landscape had ceased to bleed so dark. “Maybe by then I’ll understand why you did this. Maybe by then I’ll know if I should thank you.”