A/N - Midna is in her human form. Italics mean Twili Dialogue (the sound Midna makes when she speaks.)

Disclaimer: I do not own the Legend of Zelda. If I did, then Midna would never have shattered the Mirror of Twilight :(

Sunburn

"Hold still…"

"Ow…"

"I told you."

"Shut up."

"You didn't listen to me."

"Shut up!"

"See what happens when you don't listen to me?"

"Link, if you're going to say another word about how you were right, I'm going to rip off your earrings and then shove them up your- ow ow ow ow…"

As Midna tried to make more colorful gestures with her hands and arms, she buckled back down onto the bed in pain, lying on her belly; her back was blistered with burnt and dead skin. She was no longer wearing her extravagant robe and hood ornaments, letting her silky, orange hair flow freely around her. All she wore were her black undergarments; trying to minimize as much contact she could with her bare skin.

Link quietly whispered to her, fearing that just talking too loud would agitate her skin and cause her even more agony. "How's your sunburn feeling now?"

"Spectacular." Midna replied bitterly, still wincing at the irritating scalds across her entire back, arms, and legs. "I've experienced punishments and beatings less excruciating than this." She muttered under her breath, her voice muffled by the pillow she smothered her head in. "This is unbearable!" she cried into the pillow.

"You've been living in a world of twilight for your entire life." Link tried explaining to her. "And even though you are a light-being due to Zelda's spell, you can still get burned by the sun if you exposed your skin for too long."

"I don't want to know why I'm like this! Just tell me how to get rid of it…" Midna replied to Link, her voice cracking at the end of her sentence.

"If you had put on that lotion I had given you, this wouldn't have happened."

"As if I'll ever put anything that greasy and repulsive on myself." Midna retorted to Link. "Even I have to maintain my dignity before dipping my body in cow milk."

"Just because it's white doesn't mean it's milk, Midna." Link tried rationalizing with her. Ironically enough, even with her high and mighty talk of poise and composure, she was acting like a child. But then again, Link was the only person whom she could trust to show her immature side to.

"Just make it better, please?" Midna asked quietly, her words void of the usual callousness they possessed. It was incredibly rare for Midna to ever use the word "please". Normally, she would simply command Link to do something, no questions asked. For her to even utter that word, she was showing Link a side of her no one had ever seen. Every time she pleaded with him, she was showing him her vulnerability.

"Yeah, Midna," Link answered with a more caring voice than before. "I'll go get some help right away."

Link quickly hurried out of her quarters to Castle Town for a remedy for her ailment. All the while, Midna quietly smirked and whispered something whimsically to herself.

"Works every time…"

"What is that?" Midna asked incredulously with an appalled look on her face.

"Purple chu-jelly, it works great for burns and blisters, I heard."

"That thing looks alive! Are you trying to attach a parasite on me?"

"Come on, it'll make your sunburns go away instantly, I promise." Link replied sincerely, tossing her the bottle.

As Midna weighed her options, she reluctantly poured the contents of the bottle into her graceful hands, rubbing the jelly over her blistered arm.

Just by contact, her burns were feeling instantaneously better. A look of relief washed over her face as she continued to massage the jelly onto her arms, her legs, and the back of her neck. However, when she tried to rub the tonic on her back, she began to have some difficulty.

"Link… could you rub this on my back? I can't reach it…" Midna whined at him, handing him the bottle.

"Um… sure." Link replied hesitantly. As he took the bottle from her hands, she lied down on her belly, propping herself up with her newly rejuvenated arms. Midna then reached behind her back and untied the strap of her top garment, leaving her naked backside exposed for Link to massage.

"Wait, Midna! What are you doing?" Link asked hurriedly, his face flustered by her sudden undressing.

"I don't want you to get that stuff on my clothes, who knows if it'll wash our or not." Midna replied calmly, seemingly unfazed by the removal of her clothing. But as she saw Link's face blushing at her sudden appearance, her cheeks began to glow crimson too.

"H-hey… don't get any ideas now. I only want you to rub this on my back… No funny stuff ok?" she replied quickly, her voice with a nervous stutter to it. "I just want this sunburn to go away." She finished sternly, as if to warn him if he tried anything illicit she would gnaw his face off.

As Link tried to compose himself as a mature adult, he dispensed the jelly onto his hands and gently applied it to Midna's back, who closed her eyes and let the soothing gel seep into her burns. Link had never had this much contact with a girl before, and he had to admit, her skin was unbelievably soft. For some reason, when he was touching her like this, she felt so incredibly fragile, as if she would simply shatter against the harshness of the world. That was until he felt strange bumps against her smooth, pale-blue skin. As he looked closer at the small blemishes along her backside, he discovered that they were scar tissues.

And not just a single scar either. She had quite a few, all situated along her shoulder blades and the square of her back, each one faint and fairly healed, but still looked rough and jagged.

His hands traced along a long one located on the top of her left shoulder blade that was left behind by a Stalfos. She had a cluster of bumps near the side of her ribs, which crudely outlined a Wolfos bite. Link then took back his previous notion of her being fragile. She, an elegant princess of an entire realm, already had battle scars.

What had caught his attention the most was the scar in the center of her back. For some reason, it looked much more brutal than the others and was slightly discolored too. He slowly realized where she had gotten this scar from: this was where Zant had impaled her with Lanryu's light.

If a sunburn alone was causing her this much pain, he couldn't even begin to imagine how much agony Zant had done to her. To still be a twilight being and then be exposed to a light even stronger than the rays of the sun, it must have been beyond horrendous.

Simply out of his wolfish instincts, he desperately wanted to lick her wound, to lick away the painful memories that had accompanied it. But since he was in his human form, he took a less bestial course of action. He slowly lowered his head down and tenderly kissed the scar on her back.

Midna's eyes popped open, blushing fiercely as she felt him press his lips on her scar. She quicky turned her head around, preparing to say something out of protest. But before she could object, her attention was caught by a glint in his eyes, and within them, she saw nothing but an earnest sympathy. No, an earnest empathy. She saw in his eyes a sense of care and understanding that she had never seen before, not even from her mother and father. To a certain degree, she thought that she had seen love.

She turned her head back again, resting it on the pillow underneath her as Link continued to soothe away her sunburn. Although it was rare for Midna to say the word "please", there was another phrase that she used even less.

"Thank you, Link."

For everything.

-Fin-

A/N - Please leave a review after reading... thanks!