ChickenLover 19

closeups~

i tried to fit all mainline games + the original Hyrule Warriors 🧡

plus the background image without the burst overlay

Beth’s father beneath the moon, calling down a hawk against the wolf that stalked Ordon. Uli crying out at the mere sight of Link. Rusl lunging forward on a wounded leg, his blade close enough to shear through a few strands of fur, his face bathed in furious torchlight. Foul beast! Give me back my sons!

Link dug his nails into his palms, relieved by the reminder of his real body. Crawling on all fours, rending flesh with his claws, terrifying those he loved—how could that be the mark of a hero?

“What a shame,” Midna continued gleefully. “I mean, maybe you'd rather just wander as a spirit like the rest of them, totally unaware of what was happening for all eternity...right?”

She had a point, though he fought to keep his face from revealing so. To be helpless, or to be monstrous? Link swallowed down the taste of blood. It didn’t matter which he’d prefer. Fate had already chosen for him.

Midna rambled on about the temple the Light Spirit wanted him to seek, but Link’s gaze was drifting south. Rusl was wounded; everyone else was distraught over Ilia and the children. He had to help.

“Going home empty-handed?” Midna wondered, drifting alongside him as he started toward the bridge that connected Faron to Ordon. “The way I see it, your friends might be in that temple, waiting for you to rescue them. And last I saw, your village didn’t give you the warmest welcome!”

That wasn’t me, Link thought desperately, passing through the clearing where her magic had helped him rip out the throats of three shadow beasts. That was something else.

Vines snaked past his boots suddenly, and the bulbous head of a Deku Baba burst from the earth, dripping with venom. Instantly, the shield was on Link’s arm, blocking the creature’s hungry lunge. His sword severed it in two before his mind caught up—quick as a blink, natural as breathing, and an awful part of his heart soared as the monster withered. When did he get so good at this? He’d always weaseled out of Rusl’s lessons, yet here he was, killing as easily as he could herd or cook or swim.

“Wasn’t I so helpful, getting you those human weapons?” Midna circled him like a lazy butterfly, all fangs and no wings. “Just think of me whenever you use those, okay?”

She was smirking, always smirking, like the whole world was a joke even as it collapsed around them. Like him, Ilia would be horrified by the blood dripping from his sword. Rusl would be proud. Midna was simply unfazed. The realization planted a strange seed of warmth in his chest, one he immediately wished to excise. Their partnership was nothing more than transactional.

“Well? Let’s get moving, Mr. Important Hero.”

“My—” His voice cracked. Perhaps some effect of spending days in that other form. He cleared it and tried again. “My name is Link.”

Something passed over her face, the same cloud he’d glimpsed when Princess Zelda asked why the shadow beasts had been hunting her. Then the sneer returned with a vengeance. “Mr. Important Hero’s got a much nicer ring to it!”

Link turned his back on the bridge, every step taking him farther from home, bit down a retort he knew he’d regret. Over the next few days, he found himself doing that quite a lot.

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.

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A golden wolf with one sad eye provided gutting truth that beasts and heroes had been intertwined long before Link’s time. A temple of twisted trees and windswept gullies tested his strength and found it equal to the task. At the end of it all, he sheathed his sword and watched the ghastly plant parasite that had cursed this place shrivel into nothing.

Shadows were slithering away from the parasite’s corpse and drifting down to find him. Link raised both hands to meet the power the Light Spirit had promised. Darkness shivered up from the artifact like steam. Pain pulsed in his temples. If he closed his eyes, he would be on his hands and knees in the forest again, those first tainted breaths of Twilight turning him into a monstrosity. No wonder the parasite had been so powerful, corrupted by this magic.

Midna emerged from his shadow with a giggle. “Well done!”

He could hardly look away from the artifact. The Light Spirit had called it forbidden to those who dwelled in the light. But could Link really count himself as one of them, when he traveled the Twilight in a form no other Hyrulean possessed? When this power hovered between his hands, oozing inky shadows and calling to the deepest parts of him?

“That’s what I was looking for.” Midna’s hair snatched the artifact from his hands. “That’s a Fused Shadow.”

His hands fell to his sides. “My friends were never here.”

“Well, I had no way of knowing that, did I?

“You made it sound like…” Link’s voice died in his throat. All she’d said was that maybe his friends were here. Desperation had shaped the words into something they weren’t. His head swam with relief that Ilia and the kids hadn’t been trapped in this perilous place, terror that they might be somewhere worse, and howling confusion at how drastically his life had been altered in so little time.

“Your Light Spirit sent you here anyway. Little Midna just tagged along for the ride. I helped you. And you helped me. Everyone’s happy!”

“Everyone is not happy. You could have asked. I still would have…” Link sighed, rubbing his grimy forehead. He couldn’t deny that he’d be rotting in a castle cell without her. But she looked far too thrilled by the artifact seeping darkness in her grasp. “What is that thing?”

“Maybe I'll tell you if you find the other two.” Midna tucked the Fused Shadow away into that unseeable space she had at her disposal. The ache in his skull disappeared. He took a breath, finally noticing that the chamber was full of clear water and gentle sunbeams, and felt a heady rush of gratitude that she’d lifted the burden from his hands.

It was nothing but foolish. Midna had lured him here under false pretenses, wielded him like a weapon, dodged every question he’d asked—but she was his only ally, except for a Princess who was far beyond his reach. As he met her sly gaze, he could feel her studying him in turn, and tried not to wonder what she found.

“I’ll get you out of here,” she said, her smile spreading like fire across oiled earth. And despite himself, Link had another thing to be grateful for.

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She called him everything but his name. Little wolf. Idiot. Noble steed. Mutt. By the time they reached Kakariko, his patience was wearing thin. The blood of three shadow beasts was seeping down his throat and dripping from his fangs, and Midna was yawning languidly, nudging her heels into his sides like she’d been doing all day.

Finding the children in the cool shadows of the Sanctuary washed his irritation away. Beth and Talo, huddled with a kind-faced stranger. Colin, trying to stand tall. Malo, looking annoyed by the whole affair. With the Twilight trapping them all as guileless spirits, Link couldn’t ask why Ilia was painfully absent. Even still, the relief felt like floating in Ordon’s summer creek, enveloped by warmth.

Slowly, the voice of the man by the window caught his attention. “Remember that lady from the general store? Just one of those things attacked her, and a whole gang from town went to save her! And what happened? She was already gone, and there were TWO monsters waitin'!”

And suddenly the words were inside Link, twisting like a blade.

“You connectin’ the dots?”

No, he wasn’t. He couldn’t. Copper still reeked on his breath. Damp clung to his claws. He’d torn out the shadow beasts’ throats in the space of a few rapturous seconds, Midna’s magic guiding his every move.

Just think of me whenever you use those, okay?

A shiver wracked him from nose to tail. Link turned his head enough to see her face, finding it shockingly bereft of humor. Anyone else would have hidden from this truth. But Midna held his gaze, and for an interminable moment of anguish, the only thing tethering him to the world was the red ferocity of her eyes.

He broke her gaze when Beth started to cry. Colin reached for her shoulder and promised that Link was coming to save him, the mere sound of his name enough to stop her tears. Such faith they had in him, when all along, he’d been killing—

“How sad, to be right in front of someone and not be noticed at all,” Midna crooned, her amusement creeping back to cut through his thoughts. “And no one knows what you have done…you may be doomed to toil in obscurity forever...”

A growl rumbled through Link, low and primal. Obscurity suited him. The shadow beasts that had once been something else, the Princess’s solitary silhouette as he turned his back on her prison, the terror in Uli’s face, the fury in Rusl’s—the children could never know about any of it. They needed him to step back into the light. But the wolf would always stalk behind, and no one would know the damage he left in his wake.

No one but his shadow.

Midna leaned close enough that he could feel her breath on his ear and gave him the worst nickname of all: “My lonely little hero.”

And against all reason, Link thought, But I’m not alone.

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“You should’ve bought that metal shield,” she complained when he walked out of Malo’s new store with a red potion and a near-empty wallet.

“That flimsy wood won’t last an hour here,” she warned after he faced his first fire-breathing lizard in the sweltering Goron Mines.

“What did I tell you?!” she screeched after he caught a Bulblin’s arrow with the Ordonian oak Jaggle had painstakingly carved, his enemies jeering as he dove for cover in the open-air yard. “Look down, you idiot!”

And then he felt the fire licking at his shield, his sleeve, his skin. Link clawed at the straps securing it to his arm while smoke invaded his throat and heat seared into his flesh. Finally, he freed himself and kicked the flaming shield into the water beneath the platform.

His left hand stung as he pulled the blackened mess of his sleeve away, but it paled in comparison to the blaze of agony gnawing at his right forearm. At the sight of his skin marred into a furious red ruin, his head fell back against the meager stack of crates that sheltered him from the howling Bulblins.

He knew it was coming, but Midna’s fuming voice still made him flinch. “I told you to buy a metal shield!”

“I didn’t have the Rupees,” Link said through gritted teeth.

“You could’ve gotten the Rupees!”

“How long would that have taken? When the Gorons need help?” He swallowed down his rising nausea and watched waves of heat escape Death Mountain’s smoldering core for the distant sky, wishing he could do the same. “When Ilia is—I don’t even know—”

“You want to go after her? Be my guest! See how far you get without the help of a Twili! But that would mean leaving your precious Gorons, wouldn’t it? So what are you going to do? Can you still fight with—”

“I can always fight,” Link snarled, his gaze finding hers like steel striking flint. “That’s what I’m for, isn’t it?”

She blinked at him, her form barely visible along the shadowed edge of the sunbaked platform, her eyes wide and luminous. Another arrow landed inches from Link’s boot, and he jerked as though struck, pulling his legs closer while heat bubbled over his wound. Had he forgotten all her lies and insults? Was he a dog in truth, to start feeling such stupid loyalty toward someone who hadn’t earned it?

There was nothing more to say, nothing that could make any part of this right, but he found himself mumbling, “This would be easier if you didn’t hate me so much.”

Midna stared and stared at him until he could bear it no longer. Uncorking a red potion, he swallowed half and poured the rest over his burn. It took doubling over and clapping his good hand over his mouth to keep from screaming, but if Link had nothing else, he still had his pride.

Maybe she was the same way. When he looked up, she’d turned her back on him, arms folded across her chest. He retrieved a roll of bandages from his pouch and started winding them awkwardly around his arm, making use of his teeth when one hand wasn’t enough to hold the gauze steady. The green tunic, to his awe and horror, repaired itself every time it tore, though he wouldn’t notice it happening until the magic’s work was already done.

“I don’t hate you,” Midna said, her tone withering, her words shocking.

Link’s head snapped up in disbelief.

“I don't,” she insisted. “I just haven't forgotten what your people did to mine.”

“But I…I didn’t even know your realm existed until—”

“You light dwellers have a conveniently short memory.”

Acid dripped from her voice, but underneath it, there was real pain. Link tied his bandage slowly, buying a moment to consider his reply more carefully than he’d considered anything since the invasion had uprooted a life he’d loved and thrust him into one he scarcely understood.

“I’m sorry,” he told her finally. “For whatever happened, for whatever it’s worth—I’m sorry, Midna. But…right now, we have the same enemies. I can't fight you and them at the same time.”

He didn’t say, This hurts enough as it is. He didn’t say, I never wanted to have enemies at all. He didn’t say, I’m still grateful you’re here.

She didn’t say anything either. But she lifted her head, noticing movement on the ridge at the same time Link did—the Bulblins were trying to flank him. He set his jaw and pushed himself up, even though no shield meant no hope.

Shadows pooled around his feet then, rising like shivering walls to block out the sun. Distantly, he heard arrows meet the magic and clatter harmlessly to the platform. A dim, rosy glow—reminiscent of the energy fields that helped him kill shadow beasts—illuminated Midna’s hands, raised high to keep the barrier aloft.

“What are you staring at?” she snapped.

“You—you’re—”

“Go, before they turn you into a pincushion! What happened last time you ignored me?” She turned her head to show him the razor’s edge of her grin. Outside, the Bulblins howled with rage, but she held up the walls of this shelter the same way she held Link’s gaze.

He did as she said, shadows cloaking his flight down the platform. Wrenching open the nearest door made him dizzy with pain, but he made sure his shadow seeped through before letting it go. Midna didn’t reemerge. He didn’t need her to. She’d helped him, and that was something to hold onto.

There was no seismic shift between them. All through the mines, she still groused about the heat and questioned half his decisions, and Link still answered by rolling his eyes most of the time. At the heart of Death Mountain, he watched the Fused Shadow crawl away from the Goron patriarch’s collapsed form to coalesce in his shaking hands and wondered what he’d just done. Was this like the shadow beasts? Had he taken Darbus’s life? Was he a predator on two legs as well as four?

But before the horror spiraled beyond his control, Midna snatched the Fused Shadow and tucked it away. Darbus dragged in a shuddering breath. So did Link, his legs turning watery with relief.

Midna just planted her hands on her hips, looking him up and down with an aggrieved sigh. “You know, you've been very helpful so far, so as a reward, I'll tell you an interesting story.”

He raised his eyebrows. She’d never come within an inch of thanking him, or of apologizing, but as he listened to her speak of the false king occupying both their realms, he knew her respect meant more than either.

“Not that your Zelda is much better,” she went on. “It still appalls me that this world of light is controlled by that princess. A carefree youth, a life of luxury...how does that teach duty?”

Princess Zelda had seemed the furthest thing from carefree, after trading freedom for survival and paying for it every hour of every day. She’d recounted her kingdom’s fall without a hint of self-pity, though—holding onto her pride, like Link was, like Midna was.

“She’s more than you think,” he said. “You should give her a chance.”

“Ha! Why would I?”

“You’re giving me one, aren’t you?”

“Ugh!” Already she was diving indignantly into the darkness at his feet. “Just shut up and get me the last Fused Shadow!”

It was the first time she’d ever made him laugh.

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When he’d set Kakariko’s bomb shop on fire during his hunt for the shadow insects, Midna abandoned him without a moment’s hesitation. Trapped on a burning bridge in Lanayru, he expected the same. Instead, she stayed right there on his back, plummeting with him to the lake below.

Link turned it over and over in his mind as he forged his way up the icy river and killed another three shadow beasts in Zora’s Domain, all with her magic guiding him. Blood dripping from his fangs; blood slick between his claws; the Twilight portal materializing against pale gold clouds. Just think of me whenever you use those, okay?

The sight of the Zoras frozen like insects in amber sent a knife through his heart. He expected some snide remark from Midna, but her fingers tightened in his fur, and she said, “We can’t just leave them like this.”

Link craned his neck around to stare at her, that foolish bud of warmth tightening within his chest again. He forgot the taste of blood. He forgot the dark flecks of Twilight seeping endlessly from the sky.

“Are you wagging your tail?”

He realized he was, and found no shame in it.

“Whatever! It does us no good to just stand here thinking.” Midna yanked out their map and thrust it at him. “We just need to find a way to melt the ice. Where do you want to warp?”

Tail still wagging, Link nosed at Kakariko’s place on the map, lacking solutions to the Zoras’ predicament but wanting to check on the kids while he had the chance. She heaved out a sigh and enveloped them in darkness.

The next thing he knew, he was standing in the Light Spirit’s spring, Midna hidden in the shelter of his shadow. Blood billowed away from his paws. He dipped his muzzle into the water to wash the rest away, relishing the summer sun and the canyon wind after hours beneath the black clouds of twilight.

Laughter rang out from the village’s central lane—he recognized the voices of Colin, Beth, and Luda, though he couldn’t see them from here. One glimpse would be enough to judge how Colin was faring after his abduction by King Bulblin. Link crept forward, intending to hug the buildings and stay out of sight.

A little silhouette atop the watchtower caught his gaze. He darted beneath the nearest porch, cursing himself for forgetting that Talo had appointed himself sentry, but it was too late.

"Whoa!" The boy bellowed. "It's...it's a monster! Everybody run!"

Through the rusted staircase, Link saw Colin’s sandals catch on a rock as he tried to run, saw Luda’s soft boots turn back to pull him along. Beth was on their heels, and there was Renado, his robe brushing the ground as he ushered them into the inn.

Though the door slammed shut, Link’s keen ears picked up the hurried overlap of their voices through an open window. Renado was promising that if he barred the door, everything would be all right. Luda was worrying over Talo and Malo. Colin was remembering that his father had mentioned a wolf stalking through Ordon the night everything had changed. Beth, though—Beth was only pleading, “Not again, not again.”

Link flattened himself to the dirt and pressed his chin to his paws. He should have expected this. Uli’s terrified eyes. Rusl swinging his sword. Foul beast, give me back my sons! Copper flooded his tongue again, damning and inescapable. His roaring pulse wasn’t loud enough to drown out Beth’s sobs.

“I don’t get what the big deal is,” Midna complained.

His eyes flew open to find her at his side, a shadow with sunset eyes.

“Light dwellers are so dramatic.” Her little hand seized his scruff—hard enough to make herself known, but not to hurt. “So you’re a wolf. Is that such a bad thing to be?”

Right now, with fear filling the air and blood tainting his throat, Link could think of nothing worse. Midna looked him up and down, taking him apart in the way only she could. Then she hauled herself onto his back, and her shadows carried them away.

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He found Ilia deep within Castle Town’s twisted streets, whole and safe and more worried for a sick Zora child than herself. It was so like her that Link’s throat ached. A girl and her wolf, Midna teased, and he wanted to claw through the veil of shimmering Twilight there and then so he could hold Ilia in his human arms.

Midna’s ironclad focus on the Fused Shadows never wavered. But Link had never been focused in the first place, pulled in every direction by the kids, by Ordon, by the Gorons and Zoras, by the quiet magnetism of Zelda’s eyes. When the sun finally broke out over Lake Hylia, he wasn’t thinking of how to reach the temple in its depths. He was thinking of how to get back to Ilia.

Perhaps the Light Spirit, restored to its formidable glory, sensed that longing inside him. For when it plunged Link into darkness and filled his mind with hellish warnings, Ilia was there.

She wasn’t his best friend. She was a ghostly waif with ravenous eyes, raising her knife in pursuit of a power that was rightfully his. And Link thought, No, no, she would never hurt me, I would never hurt her, but the wolf rose up from his skin and seized the sword.

The rest was unthinkable. He found himself on his knees before the spring, overcome by jagged, panicked gasps as he tried to scrub the blood off. No, his hands were pale and dry and human, yet he could feel it still: the blade opening her throat, the life wheezing from her lungs.

Those who do not know the danger of wielding power will, before long, be ruled by it, warned the great snake, looming over him with impassive eyes. Never forget that.

Link choked out a helpless noise. As if he could ever forget.

The dark power that you seek is sleeping within Lakebed Temple in Lake Hylia.

The words battered his aching skull. He opened his mouth to demand how the Spirit could possibly send him down this road after showing him what waited at the end. Before he could say a word, Lanayru sank back into the spring and took the light with it. Link clutched his hands to his middle, trying to breathe past the taste of blood. He would never hurt Ilia. He would never—

But he’d already proven himself capable of so much.

Link’s eyes wheeled around the dim cavern, scrabbling for purchase, and found his shadow. She stared into the spring with her hands fisted at her sides.

“Did—did it show you—” He couldn’t even finish the question.

Midna didn’t even turn her head. Did she have someone like Ilia? What sort of life had she left behind in the Twilight Realm? To his sudden shame, he’d never asked. Her only desire seemed to be the same artifact they’d just been warned against, but she had her reasons for seeking it, just as he did.

He’d harbored doubts after seeing what the Fused Shadows had done to that monster in the Forest Temple, to Darbus in the Goron Mines. The Light Spirit had just multiplied them tenfold. Link wanted to throw his sword away and run until he was safe in his own bed. But what would happen to Midna’s realm if this false king went unchecked? What would happen to his own? He remembered Princess Zelda in the window, a caged bird who hadn’t flinched from the wolf, even as the rest of the world feared him. She needed this. Hyrule needed this.

Midna’s silence had stretched longer than he could stand. Link rose on shaky legs to get a better look at her wispy, unreadable face.

“Are you okay?” he asked finally.

She gave him a swift, cool glance out of the corner of her eye.

“Whatever you saw, it—” His throat closed again at the memory of Ilia’s blank gaze. “It’s not who you are.”

“And you know who I am?” Midna retorted flatly.

“I…I’d like to.”

She breathed out a bitter laugh. “No, little wolf, I don’t think you would.”

Was he dreaming, or had her voice softened a little around the nickname? He’d loathed being called that before, but this time, it didn’t remind him of the children’s fear or Rusl’s rage. It reminded him of Midna’s fanged grin through the bars of his dungeon cell. Of how she’d seen something in him that day in Kakariko, something he couldn’t face on his own.

Link pulled in a slow breath and said, “I don’t scare that easy, Midna.”

She turned to face him, eyes devoid of the ire and scorn he’d grown to expect, and studied him for so long that his cheeks began to burn. Her lips parted soundlessly. Then she dove into his shadow without a word.

Link stepped out into the blissful sunlight, wondering if he’d just ruined everything between them—but he wasn’t sorry to have tried. From the start, Midna had stood beside this strange thing he’d become, warrior and wolf, hero and killer.

He owed her nothing less than the same.

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He returned to that Castle Town bar with his heart in his hands, desperate to hold Ilia again, desperate for one thing in the world to make sense. Instead, her eyes slid past him without a flicker of familiarity. Link’s mouth shaped her name, but nothing came out. Had he changed that much? Had he become someone his best friend no longer recognized?

Telma corrected him soon enough, but she saw the wolf in him too, out there on Hyrule Field while the sunset burned a violent red over the wagon he was escorting. Ilia leaned out the window, a hollow stranger who’d suffered something so unspeakable it had stolen her memory.

And Telma said, “This swordsman of ours has great eyes, honey. They’re proud and wild, like a feral beast.”

Link’s throat closed around a nameless ache.

“We need a beast right now, to keep the true ones at bay,” Telma went on, fixing him with a keen gaze that cut deeper than most.

Link couldn’t scrape the idea out from under his skin. Not as he tore through the monsters between them and Kakariko. Not as he saw Ilia and the Zora child settled under Renado’s care. Not as he fell into a sleep plagued by dark dreams and rose before the sun, sneaking out of the inn like a thief in the night.

It was easier in the forgotten corners of Hyrule, with Midna his only witness. Their time in Lakebed Temple felt different than anything that had come before. She emerged from his shadow far more often, scouting ahead or drifting at his side as he navigated the maddening, sunless spiral of this place. They even found reasons to laugh—her disgust toward the mucous Deku Toad, his delight with the Clawshot's capabilities, their shared dread over reuniting with Ooccoo—and it always seemed like the first time these walls had ever absorbed such a sound.

Maybe nearing the last piece of the Fused Shadows had put her in a good mood. Or maybe...

Link wasn't ready to mistake this change for kindness. But he was grateful to Midna all the same, in the purest way yet.

So strange to go from laughing one minute to bleeding the next. Lakebed was one close call after another—electricity spasming through his veins in the black tunnels, skullfish sinking their teeth into his skin, giant clams trapping his limbs in their jaws. Link couldn’t fathom how many days had passed, but the cold was creeping in on him, along with the hunger and the weight of water pressing down on his head.

On a bridge high above the current, a Lizalfos ambushed him from the shadows by the doorway. Only a haphazard slash to its belly saved Link. That was a cruel place to cut, as the Hero’s Shade had taught him, so he edged toward the writhing monster to grant it a quick death. Its head snaked up to close vicious fangs over his wrist in a last act of defiance. There was pain, and there was the heat of blood, but all of it seemed as distant as Ordon. Link didn’t fight to free himself from the Lizalfos’s grip. At least it had something to hold onto as he transferred the sword to his other hand and opened its throat.

Long after the pressure disappeared and the only sound was the water rushing far below, he could not tear his eyes away from the corpse.

“Are you okay?” Midna said suddenly.

Link heard the words, but couldn’t believe them.

“Hey. I asked you a question.” He gaped at her like she’d sprouted a second head. She planted her hands on her hips and continued in a nonchalant voice that belied the intensity of her gaze. “You’re bleeding.”

He spared a glance for his dripping wrist.

“Well? Are you gonna do something about it?”

A dim echo of Uli’s voice told him the wound needed cleaning and stitches. But he was more lost in the realization that he hadn’t been okay, not even close, and Midna—the shadow who’d used and mocked and deceived him—had known.

Not only that. There were layers to her second question that he knew how to peel back, now that he’d grown used to her. And she was right. Link had been bleeding ever since the Twilight invaded his home and warped him into a beast. He had to find a way to make it stop. Two worlds depended on his ability to stomach what fate demanded of him.

“Sorry,” he said, making a cursory attempt to staunch the wound.

“Don’t be sorry. Just stop—” She sighed, rolling her eyes up at the ceiling before dropping them back to his face. And in that red-gold core of her, Link saw all the roads they’d walked and all the sins they shared and all the battles that lay ahead. “Stop thinking so much. You’ve got a Fused Shadow to collect, remember?”

“I remember,” Link replied, hearing what she wouldn’t say, what he knew in his bones. Only one thing had carried him this far.

Think of me whenever you use those, okay?

He already had a way to survive. He had her.

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There was one other soul in Hyrule who recognized the wolf as something more. And with Midna clinging to his back and rain pelting his face, Link ran to Princess Zelda like he'd never run in his life.

This time, he had no guide for the flooded tunnels or castle rooftops—but he could land these jumps blind if it meant Midna’s survival. With the shadow crystal throbbing in his skull and light already restored to every province of Hyrule, he could be trapped in this form forever. There was no time to dwell on the possibility. His human body would be unable to make this climb while carrying Midna, and four legs were so much faster than two. For the first time, he wasn’t sorry to be changed.

Only—he wished he could speak. Her grasp was so weak on his fur; her every breath sounded weaker than the last. She’d always been a thorn burrowing deeper and deeper into Link’s side, and he no longer wanted to dig her out. She wasn’t allowed to die. She wasn’t allowed to leave him alone in this.

He wished he could tell her that.

Princess Zelda said nothing when they staggered into her tower, but she caught Midna’s pale hand between hers and bent down to hear her whispered plea. Even with a wolf’s senses, he could barely make it out.

“Princess...please...” Midna’s eyes were fluttering shut. “You must help Link...”

His heart dropped like a stone into dark water.

She had used his name.

For a long minute, the only sound was rain drumming on the roof and dripping from his coat. When the Princess met Link’s gaze, it felt like the first time, when the growl had died in his throat at the familiarity in those fathomless blue eyes. She’d knelt on the cold stone to meet him, just as she was doing now, with Midna shielded between their huddled forms.

He saw in Zelda’s face the same desperation that coiled around his heart. And he saw her arrive at a terrible choice with the same severe clarity that had carried her kingdom through this invasion.

Link wanted to stop her, to die stopping her, if that was the price of keeping her radiance alight. But something told him that Zelda had been allowed few choices in her life. He couldn’t rip another from her hands.

Later, as morning sparkled over the rain-soaked field, he and Midna watched a barrier form over Hyrule Castle—a tear in the fabric of the world that Zelda had been holding together. Midna gripped his damp fur, raging and grieving.

Link’s claws dug deep into the mud. He could bring back the sun. He could kill the false king. But a scar had been carved into this kingdom that would never heal, and always, he would hear Zelda’s song on the wind.

“You were right,” Midna murmured. “She was so much more than I thought. I—I never meant for this to—”

He turned his head enough to see her, whole and healthy and glowing beneath the early orange sky. She was born to the Twilight, but with Zelda’s magic running through her veins, this realm would never hurt her again. One foot in both worlds, and her heart now torn between them, just like Link’s.

A small hand came to rest between his ears. Every hair stood on end; every sense united around the simple weight of her touch. Her fingers smoothed the buried wound where the shadow crystal pulsed beneath his skin. Link hardly felt it. He only felt her. He could not remember the last time he’d slept, but never in his life had he felt so awake.

“It’s not who you are,” Midna said, her voice softer than the dawn. “We'll turn you back. I promise.”

But there was no going back. Not for either of them.

.

.