Apothecary

Chapter 22

"...What?" Link seemed taken aback by my tone. "Y/N, what do you mean? Everything's fine--"

His tone of voice was bewildering to me--it was like he hadn't just heard himself speak half a minute ago. "No...no, everything is not fine, Link." I sighed. "May I ask what in Din's name that was?"

"What what was?"

"What you just said! I thought I just heard you say 'if you kept pushing me about this, you might not get any answers at all'! Just what was that about?!"

Link was staring at me with a look of complete and utter confusion. "Y/N...I...I didn't say anything just now..."

I just stared. Either he's being manipulative right now, or I'm crazy, or he's crazy.

"...or if I did..." Link piped back up, looking a little unsure now. "...then I don't remember what I said." 

...If someone's being influenced by dark magic, could it make you say things and forget you said them? 

Okay, that's not a horrifying thought at all. "Okay. Fine. Let's drop that. What we were just doing?"

"...Attending a ball?"

I wanted to throttle him for saying something so obvious. "Yes. Obviously. I'm asking why we were there! Did we...need to obtain some information from some nobles?  And where even were you after you followed Shad for half the night?"

The last sentence came out louder than I had anticipated. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Shad furtively begin to pull closed the tapestry that usually separated the Resistance's back table from the rest of the bar. Telma, perhaps sensing the coming storm, stood up at the same time. "Bar's closing early tonight--sorry, y'all." She flashed them the briefest of winning smiles as she shooed them out of the door--she probably thought it was going to get ugly.

Oh, how right she was.

I continued on, only briefly distracted, but still failing to notice that Link avoided all of those questions. "What I can't understand is how any of this was conducive to our plan. If we had to leave Ordon in such a hurry, why did we all of a sudden have to rush off to this dance as if our life depended on it?"

"...Part of the reason I got upset back in Ordon was because I thought that we couldn't waste any time there. I had a plan in mind--we were going to search some ruins near the village, and I was sure that would take a while--but then we got the invitations, and, well..." Link trailed off.

"Right. Because we couldn't have possibly missed the ball." My voice may have been more acidic than I'd intended, but this just did not make any sense to me at all. "And--and time spent with your family is time wasted to you?" I couldn't believe it. "How--how obsessed do you have to even--?"

"We very well couldn't have missed the ball, she sent us a personalized invitation for Nayru's sake!" He avoided the other question. "That's why she sent half the Royal Guard to pick us up, Y/N."

"Yes, very well, but you're forgetting that for our entire trip to Castle Town I didn't know that! You never told me!" I bit my tongue to keep from raising my voice even more. "You couldn't even be bothered to tell me why we were going back to Castle Town in the first place! Eliza had to tell me! Eliza, who's been stuck in Castle Town, somehow knew that I was headed to a major event before the man I've been traveling with even bothered to tell me!

He sighed dismissively, only making me more angry. "One sentence! One sentence, Link! That's all it would have taken! 'Zelda's holding a ball and she'd like us to be there.' That's all you had to say! And then," I just remembered he'd actually done this, "and then you tell me that you recommended me to be the Royal Apothecary? Without my knowledge?"