The River

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/20188666.

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Category: F/M
Fandom: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda:
Twilight Princess
Relationship: Ashei/Shad, Ashei/Shad (Legend of Zelda)
Character: Shad (Legend of Zelda), Ashei (Legend of Zelda)
Additional Tags: Romance, Drama & Romance, Fluff, Kissing, Drawing, Muses, Post-
Game Adventure, Romanticism, Friends to Lovers, Friendship/Love,
Male-Female Friendship, Secret crush spills out through clumsiness,
Shad is a disaster again
Stats: Published: 2019-08-11 Words: 3135

The River
by PerennialFall

Summary

They stopped upon a glistening river on their way to the Hebra frontier in the North. Unable
to concentrate on his notes, Shad found himself sketching the true beauty of the wilds,
instead.

Notes

Feedback is appreciated. I am here for the rare-ships.

The journey was cold and hard and rough.

For two weeks Ashei and Shad had traversed across the perilous lands to the north of the Zora's
Domain, where the atmosphere had been positively delightful in comparison. The air around the
waterfall basin carried a gentle humidity and a scent not unlike that of the rains, along with the
croaking of frogs and the tremulous glow of fireflies at dusk. The scholar almost wished that they
hadn't passed it, for the rest of the road was so dreary in measure, and the chill of the mountains
had soaked right into his socks.

It also hadn't helped that most of their journey had been governed by a deferential quiet, save for
their breaks around the campfire, where even then Ashei disappeared to hunt before sundown.
Without the rest of their usual companions around to keep him company—their lives drawn to
other corners of the world by Hyrule's restoration efforts—Shad was simply left to content himself
with the familiar draw of his books.

Embarking on an adventure like this at the Queen's behest was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,
and the scholar couldn't have complained of the fact that he was being sponsored to uncover the
mysteries of these new lands. By good fortune, the woman at his side also happened to be his long-
time colleague and friend. She was, and always had been, the sword to his quill. The muscle to his
intellect.

Though, as romantic as that had seemed on paper, it really didn't make the saddle any less rough on
his bones. And, rather than disturbing the peace they'd carved out in the duration of their working
relationship, Shad reconciled that the warrior was better left undisturbed… as free to exist in her
element as the blue nightshade they'd just passed along the mountain path.

"Hey," came the gruff voice from nearby, heavier than normal from hours of travel. Shad
immediately whipped his attention forward. Her armour glinted back at him through the muted
light of the evening.

"We should stop here for the night. Set up camp and I'll be back with something to eat, yeah?"

"Of course." He smiled.

They came to an abrupt halt. Ashei slid down from the side of her horse and walked over to a
reclusive spot cut into the mountain pass, tucked out of the way of the weather. The last rays of the
sun hit the snow on the top of the mountains nearby, drawing the scholar's attention momentarily,
before he saw her readying her hunting equipment.

"You're going down to the river to fish?" He blinked, noting that they were some height away from
the basin.

"Do you see any pheasants around here?" she retorted.

"I only mean to be careful. The wolves have only gotten louder in the evenings."

"On that note," the warrior smirked, as she smacked the smaller of her bows and a quiver of arrows
against his chest, "remember everything I showed you, yeah? Not that you're likely to need it."

But before he could open his mouth to say anything, she made her way to the drop-off and
descended quietly to the estuary below.

With the campfire and bedrolls set, Shad soon found a comfortable nook of a nearby tree in which
to settle with his notes. Strategically, he'd selected someplace where not even the wolves could
have gotten the drop over his shoulder.

He thumbed through the pages of his notebook—past the dot points he'd jotted next to various
illustrations of wild berries and mushrooms, and the pressed flowers that threatened to fall into his
lap—to an area near the back, tucked out of reach from the rest of his research. Some of the pages
were crinkled from when the rain had leaked through his coat. Although the fire and a couple of
well-placed stones had done a fair job of mitigating the damage, the scholar had nearly had a heart
attack when Ashei prodded it with her hands and announced that it was dry.

'Everything you showed me,' he thought wryly.

He then stopped upon a blank page. The first blank page, in fact, following a series of sketches.

They were amateurish, at first. A lone, indiscernible figure standing in a field of flowers. A woman,
holding back her bowstring as she looked to a rabbit in the distance. Eventually, the curtain of dark
hair that obscured her face crept into view… along with those sharp eyes, which had thick lashes
running along the bottom lids… and her lips, which were pale and small, often tinted from the
cold. He'd pieced her armour together with painstaking detail and then erased the parts of her
knuckles where the light shone back. Soon, the book was half-full of her striking features,
immersed in the dry wilderness of the tundra.

Listening, waiting, watching. Fleeting. For her attention was always elsewhere, and never honed in
on the artist. But that didn't matter.

Shad bathed in the silence and reflected upon the prior day, his eyes smiling at the edges as he
seized the memory he'd been dying to record all this time. That moment when Ashei had spotted a
fox with curiously grey fur, unlike the russet colour of the grasslands varieties, across the barren
slopes. She drew in a quiet gasp and pointed into the distance, her eyes brightening with an
apparent fondness for the rare creature. And then she smiled, unguardedly, in his presence. The
sight had warmed him just as the fire did now.

He soon set to work, practicing the subtle curvature of her eyes as they'd narrowed, the angles of
her face as she'd turned away. Although, he had to admit, the trees and mountain side surrounding
her were rather impressionistic compared to the level of detail he'd summoned for his colleague.

A sound threw him off. He immediately recognised the warrior's footsteps crunching up the side of
the hill and snapped the book shut, hands trembling as he stuffed it away. He then smiled to her in
greeting, as she hauled a great salmon to their campsite over her shoulder.

"Hope you're hungry," she said proudly, before slapping their catch down onto a slab of wood and
readying the knife that was to gut it.

"My apologies! You see, there was rather a long wait involved, so I had my fill of these berries
instead," he joked, before gesturing to one of the branches that hung near his head in the alcove.
"They are actually rather nice. If you enjoy the sensation of burning in your mouth."

Ashei held back a laugh as she regarded him coyly over the flames.

"Stop fooling around, yeah? And help me get this show on the road."

The next day, after a careful descent from the mountain ridge, they happened upon a quiet flat of
grass in the heart of the wilderness. Here, the pine trees dipped down into the lulling river, which
was now an uncanny shade of turquoise blue. It was nothing quite like the estuaries that ran
through central Hyrule. Neither was the creeping cold.

Ashei looked to the snowy heights that bordered the horizon ahead and squinted, and Shad
watched. She murmured that this might be their the last stretch of forest before winter reigned over
the province. She then turned her attention back to the strip of water that glistened nearby. The
balmy air that echoed faintly of Zora's Domain, and she breathed it in with a sigh.

He sensed her trepidation.

"Did you perhaps want to stop and take a closer look?"

"The journey's only gonna get rougher from here on out. Don't wanna delay it any longer than
necessary," she rebuffed.

"… Ah! But look at these wildflowers!" he gasped, before steering his horse through the field and
towards the river. "Would you afford us a small break, at the very least?"

Unwilling to argue with him, the warrior followed his lead over to the river's edge, where they
slipped free of their horses.

Their small break soon fell into an hour. Shad sat contentedly in the sun along the riverbank,
having recorded his observations of the flowers long ago. Now, he was merely pretending to sketch
them as his eyes flashed over the pages. The warrior had since absolved herself of her armour and
stepped into the water. She wore little else but the shorts beneath her leggings and a grey bodice
that contrasted against her pale skin.

He did blush and consciously turn himself away as she removed her clothing—without so much as
a warning—although things quickly returned to normal once her form was obscured by part of the
river. He'd also realised, with some relief, that she was not actually indecent.

It was here and now, in the flickering light of the river, with her hands trailing along the surface,
that he could not bring himself to look away. Ashei closed her eyes as she embraced the relative
comfort of the waters, noting that they were, in fact, warmer than the mountain air that shifted
lightly around them.

'Perfect,' Shad echoed to himself, scrawling as she paced only metres away.

The waves of the river melted effortlessly around her body, as she stood, central, to the living stage
of the wilds.

It was true that his writing implements were meant to be used on research, and that he'd already
recorded numerous examples of the North's unique flora and fauna. But the beauty that unfolded
before him was forever changing. And he'd known that no single picture was ever going to do it
justice.

"Hey."

Jolting out of his thoughts, his heart now beating fast in the pit of his throat, Shad tore away from
the page and looked up at Ashei. He'd closed the book in a surge of adrenaline.

"I know you're busy and that you've already scrubbed up this morning," she began. "But the water's
actually… nice. You should give that a break, yeah? Jump in for a bit."

"O-Oh, I… I'm fine," he stammered.

"Don't tell me you can't swim."

"I most certainly can," he added wryly. "However, today I shall be enjoying the water from a safe
distance. Thank you."
"At least take those ridiculous socks off and dip your feet in," she bartered, rolling her eyes. "Come
on! Or I'll carry you in."

She began to stalk towards him from the river's edge, causing him to flinch and scramble
backwards, stuffing the book under his arm as he did so. He missed the diabolical sound that she
made before she lurched out of the water and dashed in his direction, a smirk on her otherwise
aloof face. The loud splash sent him tripping onto the grass. The carpet of flowers that ruptured
under his fall hadn’t made the landing any softer.

He expected to hear her laughter, as it usually rang out, whenever he'd fumbled a shot with the bow
or his horse had munched on his shoulder. Instead, there was only silence. With great horror, he
turned himself around and witnessed the sight of his notebook spilled open; its pages turning in the
breeze, as the various sketches he'd gathered thus far flickered fast before the warrior's keen
gaze. Ashei brought a hand to her mouth and gasped, audibly and visibly rattled by what she saw.

To call this embarrassing would've been the understatement of the century.

Goddesses, damn it! He'd known that he was getting complacent, that he was tempting fate
by daring to brandish such a thing by the water's edge while she waded around only paces away.
And yet, nothing could have prepared him for such an accident.

His sketches were a secret thing. A private thing! As much as they might’ve ruined her own
privacy, he mused, with no absence of shame. Nobody was ever supposed to know. It was exactly
the sort of secret that one ought to have taken with them to the grave.

"What is the meaning of this?" she demanded, her eyes burdened with anger.

Just how long had he been watching her? Days? Months? Had this actually started all the way back
in Telma's Bar, where they'd shared a meeting table nearly everyday through the Twilight crisis?
Or was this something new? Some strange compulsion that had come over him ever since they'd
departed from civilisation?

"Ashei… I-I can explain—"

"Explain?! Explain how this—" she lifted the notebook to a page that depicted her with her eyes
closed, her head nestled gently against one of her arms, "wound up in your field notes? I thought
you were working on your compendium of all the resources we've seen! Animals, plants,
landmarks! Why is there a picture of me sleeping in there?!"

Nights of him scrawling by the campfire came flooding back to her as she shouted, prompting her
to wonder what else had slipped past her notice.

"I. Uh."

Frightfully, Shad collected the notebook and pulled it to his chest, steeling himself before he would
even attempt to grapple with the fury that burned within her.

"Y-You just… always looked so… one with nature." He swallowed. She hadn't murdered him yet,
so he took the chance to continue. "In all the years I've known you Ashei, I'd never have guessed
that you were out of your element in the city. Yet, it is so painfully clear to me now that this is the
place where your heart truly lies. I found every one of those moments to be beautiful, beyond
compare."
The warrior's expression hadn't budged an inch, though the sharpness in her eyes had softened, just
a little. "So, what? You think I belong out here cause I can't tell the difference between those
damned forks in the palace?"

"Heavens, no!"

Shad slowly picked himself up off the ground as he continued, not bothering to brush the dirt and
petals from his coat.

"I only meant that this place… it strips away all pretension and leaves people such as myself
vulnerable to the wolves. But not you. Never, you! It's the way that you are, Ashei… how you look
to your surroundings, how you fight to survive, how even in the way you talk… you bare
everything to the world! I always found it refreshing. Inspiring! When you believe someone to be a
fool, you simply tell them so! It was that honesty I wished to capture, in the midst of all this
wonder and exhaustion we've experienced on the road."

There was a heavy pause in which she said nothing and turned away, locking her attention onto the
river instead. Its blue waters churned lightly in the current, and she observed the manner in which
the froth and pine needles that gathered around the rocks were pushed downstream.

"I don't know what to say to you," Ashei finally admitted, meeting his eyes with an intense flare. "I
normally have trouble letting my guard down around others but I… always found it easy to do
around you."

He knew apologising was futile, though that wasn't about to stop him from trying.

"I'm truly sorry for betraying that trust."

"You didn't do anything else weird like steal bits of my hair, did you?" she questioned, brusquely.

"N-No! Never!" he stammered. "My intention was never to encroach into your space or to disturb
you as you normally are! In fact, my aim was to capture these moments as though I were not even
there. However, I must apologise again that I did not ask your permission first. And I would
completely understand if this were to put an end to our working relationship! Or to create a strain
that cannot be bridged, out of my foolishness—"

"Stop talking."

Ashei sighed heavily and brought a hand to her temple, shielding whatever emotion swept across
her face.

"Can I look at them?"

"Oh. Ahaha… th-they're not very good—"

She shot him an icy glare, as though to say he had little choice in the matter. And so he handed the
book over.

Even now, as she studied his work, in silence, he knew these drawings to be only pale imitations of
her beauty. He recalled the moments tied to each illustration as they passed, like a series of
treasures he'd hidden away. He couldn't capture the scent of the forest or the damp of the
mornings. But there were her eyes. And there was the slope of her nose. Eventually the warrior
stopped upon the final page, depicting the glint in her eyes as she'd discovered the fox.

"Won't you at least scold me for being an idiot?" Shad asked, after biting his lip shut for some
time.

"I'm still making my mind up about that."

After what seemed like an eternity in hell, Ashei closed the notebook and set it down on a nearby
boulder some distance from the water's edge.

"Come to the river. We'll talk, there," she growled over her shoulder.

"O-Of course," Shad obliged.

She waited for him in the middle of the stream, standing where the water came up to her
midsection just like she had earlier.

He looked down, taking care not to linger, and then back up. There was no other way to go about
it. Slowly, he stripped away the various layers that had shielded him from the wilderness up to this
point—the dark cloak that protected against the elements, his purple coat adorned with buttons that
depicted the Oocca, followed by his white ribboned shirt, his trousers, his "ridiculous" socks, and
then finally his glasses.

There he stood, vulnerable and alone, in nothing but his small-clothes.

He winced away the last of his pride as he ventured out into the rushing stream. The current pulled
him in with each clumsy step over the stones that ran along the bottom. Once he'd made it most of
the way, Ashei turned to meet him. He found himself feeling grateful that she'd looked away for
most of it, especially in time that he undressed.

"Here you are, Shad," she said softly. "One with nature. Everything bared to the world. How does it
feel?"

"Cold," he admitted.

The warrior looked him over… noting how his skin stood on end in the breeze, against the mild
temperature of the river, how the veins in his neck flashed green against his warm complexion, and
how the sunlight danced with the colours in his auburn hair. His eyes—a deep indigo, like the
evening sky upon the snow—seemed softer without those round, golden frames. He was beautiful,
beyond compare. But she didn't need silly implements to capture it.

"Good," she answered.

She edged forward, reaching out to hold him by the wrists. A small sound escaped his mouth
before she kissed him, slowly, breathing all of the missing warmth back into his bones.
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