Chapter Text
Zelda woke after just a few hours of sleep to the light of dawn. Cold, pale. Which alerted her to the fact that she wasn’t in her room, with her blinds drawn, but somewhere else. She let the events of the previous night creep into her head. It had been just hours before, but she remembered it like a dream.
Because she couldn’t stay still the night before, she’d busied her hands with the task of reheating leftovers. Yes, they were steady, had been for the whole ordeal, and this felt so dissonant that she couldn’t help but fear what’d happen to her once she stopped moving. So she didn’t. While the leftovers were being reheated, she made it out of her night gown and methodically removed her jewelry and her make up. She got comfortable, and her bodyguard, who up until then had been invisible in her own home, did too.
He was wearing shorts and a T-shirt. Surely, she wasn’t supposed to see him like that, but they ate together and, when she began to play cards on her own over the coffee table, he temptatively joined in. They only exchanged stray words about the game, an excellent distraction that prevented her from having to admit out loud that she didn’t feel like she would be able to sleep by herself that night. Suddenly, the naive, unassuming look on his face annoyed her.
“Hey, are you just humoring me?” she asked.
“Hm?” He looked sleepy, which only deepened her suspicions. Then, her question seemed to click into his head, because he replied, “I guess this helps with all of that.” A hand gesture to indicate “before”.
“Yeah, it does.” Her tone softened, to her embarrassment. His hands were steady, too, and she tried not to stare at his fingers too much, and to not think about the broken skin of his knuckles and his silenced gun inside her apartment, which must be warm with fresh blood. He didn’t look like someone capable of murder. He was tan over his scars, and the slant of his eyes made him look not tired, but lazy.
Sleep had caught up with them right there, it seemed. They had rested in each one of the two couches and, what was even more worrying, Zelda had a blanket over her body. In the morning light, this all seemed very inappropriate, if not outright dangerous. He was her father’s hire.
Link. She had asked him for his name, half asleep, as he spread the blanket over her.
The other couch looked slept in, but, to her relief, he wasn't there anymore. Her phone chimed with an e-mail. Her dad wanted to see her. She stalked back to her bedroom to shower and get dressed, formal and clean, although she had to wear a pair of thick bracelets to cover the marks over her wrists. They were frivolous for the occasion, but, if it would rile her father up, it was just as well.
When she was ready, Zelda paused by her bedroom door. The apartment seemed empty. Living with Link was like having a ghost, but over the last few weeks she had learned to listen for him: calm breaths, light steady footsteps. He wasn't home. Good. She didn't want him to come along for this. Meetings with her dad were humiliating enough without an audience. So she grabbed her bag and took the elevator down to the garage.
In the daylight, the image of the broken down car was even more striking. It looked ruined; the back riddled with bullet holes and the inside full of glass. The door to the driver’s seat was open and Link was sitting half in, half out, speaking on the phone. He looked up when he heard her arrive. She should have taken a cab.
“I have to go”, she heard him whisper. Silence. “Yeah.” He sent a furtive look her way and, before hanging up, “Love you too.” His expression didn't change when he got up and faced her, so she tried to pretend like she hadn't heard, too. Like she wasn't speculating about who it was on the other side of the line. If it was her, she wouldn't like her boyfriend to be a live-in bodyguard for another girl. Or to go on killing-sprees, for that matter. How much did he tell her? How much did he even know?
“We can’t take it to the shop,” he told her regretfully. He was talking about the car.
“Why?”
“Well, there would be questions.”
“I know that,” she scowled. “What the hell do you care?”
His mouth opened at her swearing.
“I was assuming that you don't want people to know about last night.” He meant her father.
“You work for him.”
“I’m assigned to you.”
She scoffed at that. Yeah right. The way he spoke was still so tame, matter-of-fact, but she wasn't falling for it.
“Tell him whatever you want. I'll take care of the car.”
Zelda walked past him to get in the driver's seat. It screeched when she sat down. Had they blown a tire getting home? She took it a short way, over to another gate. Not the one that opened to the street. Behind this one was her own workshop. She had a few projects going on, but she probably could get this one into shape in a few weeks.
She walked out, to her motorcycle. She popped the little trunk on it and threw one of the two helmets at Link. It hit his chest, then his hands. She put hers on. Link looked around, to the other seemingly functioning cars she had in the front of the garage.
“I'm not getting in a car with you today.”
He shrugged, put the helmet on and climbed on behind her. His hold on her waist was so faint that it gave her goosebumps.
Outside, she took a breath of fresh air. She wasn't rusty, she was just reckless, and she let the engine make more noise than it was necessary as she made her way along the avenue. She let herself fantasize about just driving away, but there were only so many times she could circle the neighbourhood before she was called out on it. She had made the fifteen minutes of the drive into thirty when she felt Link pinch her. Zelda sighed and she drifted onto the sidewalk to park crookedly across the front door. She didn't plan to be inside so long that she'd need to go into the parking garage. They walked through the doors without stopping at security, even though Link exchanged nods with the door-woman, and took the elevator up to Rhoam’s office.
Zelda hesitated by the door, sensing Link behind her. She was unsure whether she wanted a witness or not. But, of course, it wasn't her choice. So she knocked and, without waiting for an answer, opened the door. Link went in after her. The click of the door closing already made her feel claustrophobic.
“Good morning, my daughter. Your manners haven’t changed.”
“You called for me?”
“I did.” Link’s head was bowed, his hands clasped before him. “What did you do last night?”
Zelda’s expression didn't change, even though she felt her stomach close off.
“Like you wanted, I was at the—” He didn't let her finish.
“Because my people tell me that you left early. With someone.”
Zelda clenched her fists, torn between anger and relief. He didn’t know? If even he didn’t know, she must’ve found something really, really dark.
“I don't see the problem, seeing how I’m an adult.”
“Are you?” She hated that he sounded much more composed than her, grave and slow. She didn't answer, so he kept going, “I give you the simplest tasks I can, and you still manage to embarrass me.”
Through the knot in her throat, she answered, “Yes sir.”
“It’s all you have to do, seeing as you never come to work.” Zelda simmered. He didn’t use to like it either, when she worked there full time before he bullied her off the floor. Cold, she replied,
“Could I get a copy of yesterday’s guest list? Let me make it up to you.”
Rhoam eyed her suspiciously.
“Talk to Linda.”
“Thank you.”
“Zelda, before you go… What did you do to your bodyguard’s face?”
“Bar brawl. With respect, you have to start being more careful of who you hire.”
He hummed at that. She couldn't tell if it was a good or a bad sign.
“You are dismissed. Not you, Link. Stay.”
Zelda nodded. She closed the door carefully behind her, leaving Link to fend for himself, and went to get the guest list from the secretary. She was as quick as was polite, and then she rushed to take the elevator down, hop on the motorcycle and speed away.
She didn’t go home, she wanted to be alone. She drove through the city centre, scouting the crowds. There was Jack, eye bloody, on a park bench. Yiga clan tattoos peeked under collars, socks and sleeves, all looking at her. She couldn't shake the feeling sticking to her skin, of being watched.
Zelda didn't stop until she crossed the open gates of her junkyard. Technically it wasn't hers, it was Prunia’s, but she could go in and out as she pleased. She didn't stop to say hi, or even to check if Prunia was working that day. All the way in the back, she started sorting through pieces of scrap metal.
Two hours later, she had two neatly organised piles, dust in her hair and grease on her blouse. On one of the piles she had pieces she could take home and use to fix Link’s work Toyota. The other one was discards. She did this sometimes, after she had a meeting with her father. She fixed something carefully, methodically picking out what she could make useful, stacking up what not even she could.
Then, Zelda tidied the loose hairs from her ponytail behind her ears and she took a bat to the second pile until she was hoarse and red in the face, and she had blisters in the palms of her hands. Prunia never mentioned it and, in exchange, Zelda let her have most of her fixed projects.
She lowered the bat, already feeling the soreness in her arms. Her suit jacket was off, thrown over the front half of a car. Her hair was in her face. Link was sitting on one of the work benches, staring at her through his sunglasses. Even though he was in the shade, his neck was flushed. He was lucky she had just spent the better half of an hour bashing aluminium in like a maniac, because she sensed inside herself a newfound patience, and threw the bat to one side.
“Came to get payback after getting fired?”
His suit was a bit crumpled, but he still looked sharp, more so beside her. Maybe the stitches would have made him look tougher if he was a few years older. As it was, they made him look a little of a trouble-maker. In an elf-way, with his long nose and ears that poked through his blond hair. It was so stupid that he had blond hair. And long, too. Didn’t Rhoam have something distasteful to say about that?
“I’m still on duty.”
“Oh. Right.”
That could only mean one thing, really. He’d told on her, which she already expected. To be fair, she had put him in an impossible situation. She checked, but there were no new e-mails on her phone.
“How did he take it?”
“Take what?”
“Come on.”
Link’s eyebrows furrowed.
“I told you I work for you, not him.” She hadn’t heard that edge in his voice yet. Weary, almost mad. She had managed to offend him. Something about it thrilled her.
“Remind me who pays you.”
He turned around and started walking. She was done anyway; she needed to take a shower and get her clothes to the dry cleaner’s. She would have someone deliver the pieces she’d chosen to her garage.
She liked being the one looking at Link’s back for a change. The muscles in his neck, tense, the hint of his shoulderblades through the fabric. But, when they got to her ride, he let her get on before him to drive them home.
Whatever it was that had gotten into him, he had reeled it in by the time they got back to the flat. It had been so quick, only now did she see the missed opportunity to poke at it with a stick.
“How did you find me, anyway?”
Zelda was doing the zipper on her jumpsuit, eager to start working downstairs on the car.
“I got a ride.”
“From who? Girlfriend?”
“Excuse me?”
“Oh, sorry, forgot you're probably wearing a wire. But I heard you on the phone this morning.”
She knew this was self indulgent. Inappropriate, too. But she couldn't help herself.
“Oh, that was my mother. And I’m not wearing a goddamn wire,” he said, exasperated, though the swear rolled off his mouth so gently, almost as much as the word mother. He untucked his dress shirt and unbuttoned three, four, of the top buttons. He opened it for her to see. On one of his tangled fingers, she caught a glimpse of a tattoo. It was the wrong shape for an eye. Then she stared at his bare chest. Christ. His mother?
“Paula dropped me off.” At her puzzled look: “That's the security employee on the ground floor of your building.” She didn't like his tone, but she let it go because his shirt was still unbuttoned.
“Get dressed, will you. I'm going downstairs to work on your car.”
Zelda didn't mention it again, but he hadn't really answered her question at all.