Archive of Our Own ^beta

Travel quickly made you lose all sense of privacy. By the end of the first week Zelda didn’t even blink at nudity, and by the end of the second she’d thoroughly forgotten that there was anything to blink about. Nothing was less sexual than desperately scrubbing sweat off your skin, especially if it’d turned itself to a sandy grime-paste, clinging to you as clots. Whether or not you and your traveling companion were naked while doing it was irrelevant. Besides, after a full day of trekking through ash and narrowly avoiding horrid monsters, it was difficult to focus on anything but the divine sensation of water sliding down your aching skin.

So she was distracted. That’s why she didn’t notice the burn until they were almost done bathing.

Overlooking it was a feat. It was roughly the size of her hand, covering a good chunk of Impa’s side, blisters dotting inflamed skin. Once, Zelda had knocked her hand against the side of the oven while removing bread, leaving an angry line of blisters. It’d been painful for days, and even Link had grown tired of her complaining by the end of it. Impa’s burn looked a magnitude worse, viciously painful and far too large to ignore, and yet she showed no sign of it as she carefully washed around it.

“When did that happen?” Zelda asked, stalking over to Impa, splashing water as she went.

Impa blinked. “When did what happen?” she asked, sounding honestly confused.

Zelda gestured wildly at the burn. “That!”

Impa looked down at her side, pausing for a second as she took in the burn. Then she shrugged. “I likely acquired it while fighting the Fire Lizalfos earlier.”

She went back to bathing as if nothing happened, wringing out her washcloth. Zelda furiously shook her head. “We need to take care of it!”

“It is only a minor burn,” Impa dismissed.

“Minor!” Zelda repeated, incredulous. “It’s as big as a gourd! It has blisters!”

“It’ll heal, and it does not interfere with my movement. It is nothing to be concerned about.”

Impa clearly considered the matter done, and started on bathing her arm. Zelda stared at her, arms at her hips, trying to channel Knight Commander Eagus’s dreaded stare of disapproval. It did not work nearly as well on Impa as it did on Groose.

Finally, she threw her hands up in the air. “You,” she said, pointing at Impa, “are insufferable. We’re treating that.” With that she stalked out of the water and started putting her dress back on.

Impa watched her move with a slight confused frown on her face. Zelda pointed at their improvised fire pit, hastily set up before their baths. “Sit.”

“This is truly unnecessary.”

“Do you want an infection?” Zelda snapped. “This is how you get an infection. Sit.”

At long last, Impa sighed, but moved out of the water. By the time Zelda had filled their little pan with water, Impa had pulled on her pants and sat next to the fire pit. Zelda handed Impa the pan, slouching a little water over the edge as she did. “Hold this,” she ordered. “I’ll be getting fire wood.”

“I can —” Impa started.

“Absolutely not. If I see you moving I’ll — I’ll — I’ll smite you.”

“Smite me?” Impa repeated, the corner of her mouth tugging slightly upward.

“Smite you,” Zelda confirmed. “Which is a thing I know how to do. Remembered yesterday. So wait until I get back and stay still.”

Impa balanced their pan on her legs and held up her hands. “As you say, Your Grace.”

“Good.” Zelda nodded, satisfied, and went to get firewood.

Demise had done a number on the land. In his aftermath, there were not enough trees left to give her cover should she decide to squat down and scream, so she — bravely — did not. Instead, she took deep, steady breaths as she snapped dry branches off dead trees, and graciously kept her calm as she fervently searched Hylia’s memories for an answer as to what the fuck was wrong with Impa.

She came up empty. Few of Hylia’s memories were clear, and even fewer were easily placed in chronological order. Any memories she had of Impa were blurry, impressions, sounds and colours more than true recall. Spots of red that might be flowers, laughter like a bell, and a strange one that was nothing but the overwhelming, choking sensation of grief and righteous fury.

Halfway hidden behind a tree, she peeked her head out and observed Impa. She sat cross-legged, holding the pan, looking straight ahead with a blank expression, still as a rock. Even from a distance, Zelda could see some of the more gruesome scars on her torso: a long, straight slice down the side of her stomach going all the way down to the end of her thigh; a patch of jagged skin down her forearm; a series of round puncture marks on her chest mirrored perfectly at her back. She supposed that if a monster big enough to leave those marks had used her as a chew toy, she might not consider a mildly blistered burn such a big deal either. But it sat uncomfortable in her stomach, that apathy.

Her hands, arms and dress were already black with soot. Not only were trees sparse, the handful still standing were mostly dead, covered in a layer of ash thick enough to sink your finger into. The earth was scarred, large chasms tearing through the surface, random craters burrowing itself in the middle of what had once been forests. Zelda did not have many memories of the war with Demise, but the few she had were of incomprehensible violence, things that a human would be lucky to survive for even a second.

What would it have taken for a human to survive the whole fight?

“Were you planning to reveal yourself any time soon?” Impa asked.

Zelda startled, jumping into the air and nearly dropping her bundle of sticks. Impa was looking straight at her tree, leaning back a little bit, one eyebrow raised. Caught, Zelda sheepishly stepped out from behind the tree.

“How long did you know I was there?”

“Since the beginning,” Impa replied dryly. “The trees do not provide adequate cover. Do not use this tactic on monsters.”

Of course that would be Impa’s concern. Zelda suppressed a sigh. She moved toward their camp and began setting up the fire.

“We’re boiling water and cleaning your burn,” she announced. Impa acknowledged with a dip of her head.

Silence fell. Zelda was unsure how to have the conversation she needed to have, so she did was she always did when she felt unsure: just go for it.

“We can’t have you hiding injuries,” she stated, trying to sound like she had any kind of authority.

“I did not mean to hide anything,” Impa responded. “I truly did not realize I’d been burned.”

Zelda inhaled sharply. “That means you’re unable to tell when you’re injured. That’s worse. You understand why that’s worse?”

Impa waved a hand. “I can tell when I’m injured. Scratches simply don’t bother me.”

“That is not a scratch,” Zelda said slowly. “That is a blistering burn. That’s bad.”

Impa sighed. “Genuinely, it is not. There are altogether very few blisters, the skin is not peeling, and the discoloration is not severe. Even untreated, this kind of burn will fade eventually. It is large, yes, but not in an area that would hinder my fighting, so it’s no serious danger to my well-being. The only real risk is that of infection, and that is a risk with all wounds.”

Zelda stared at her. “But burns hurt,” was all she could think to say.

“So does most everything. This pain is unremarkable.”

Hm. Alright. Okay.

Zelda’s goals for the immediate future: 1. Kill Demise, save the world, 2. Hug Link, 3. Convince everyone on Skyloft to move to the Surface, and the newly added, 4. Wrap Impa in at least fifteen blankets. And then maybe dig up Demise’s corpse and kill him again. That could be goal five.

Somehow, though, Zelda did not think Impa would be receptive to arguments such as, Everything is not supposed to hurt and the fact that you think that’s normal scares me, so she had to try something different.

“An inability to tell when you’re wounded puts both you and me in danger.” Zelda stressed the ‘and me’ part of that sentence, and that caught Impa’s attention. She sat up straighter and gave her that creepy intense focus stare she had. Good. “Even if the only risk is infection, that’s a real risk. If you get sick or die, I won’t be able to find my way to the Temple, and will probably die within the week. Any risk to your health, no matter how minor, is not one we can afford.”

That seemed to do it. Cocked her head, considering, then nodded decisively.

“That logic is sound,” she agreed. “I apologize for my negligence.”

Zelda took great care to keep her face neutral, and to refrain from jumping up into the air and pumping her fist. “Apology accepted,” she responded graciously. “Now help me start this fire so we can get the water boiling.”

She was getting better at this ‘communicating with Impa’ thing. If she kept this up, she might even be able to convince her to take a nap, at some point.