Disclaimer: The Legend of Zelda and its characters belong to Nintendo, a company with which I am not affiliated other than enjoyment of its games.

Notes: Inspired by my cranking up a new Majora's Mask file in "celebration" of the Mayan Apocalypse hype. I've only played MM start-to-finish once in my gaming-life so far. When going through the first parts of the quest on my fresh file, I thought about the Moon shedding a tear…and how I have so few Majora's Mask fics in my fanfiction library so far. This is a very "early in the game" perspective.

INNOCENT CRIMINALS

A Majora's Mask Fan Fiction by Shadsie

The people in Clock Town have always held me in high regard. The light I shine down upon them is merely a pale reflection of what is provided by my sister, the Sun, but the people have always given me equal respect. They note my phases to mark the seasons and natural cycles, regarding me as connected to the Goddess of Time. Why the Goddess gave me a frightening face, locked in a perpetual grimace, is a story that the people of Clock Town tell their children. The little ones are told that I protect them from errant shooting stars and other dangers in the heavens by frightening them away, just like they do when they wear masks to frighten away evil spirits at the Carnival of Time each year.

The Deku people of the swamp do not have much regard for me, as they are dependant upon the light from the Sun to sustain their life. The Gorons of the mountains have never feared my face, for their young ones aspire to be as tough a stone as I am. The Zoras of the ocean praise me for being the keeper of their tides. The restless dead of the canyon-lands of Ikana dance beneath my reflected light. In all of Termina, however, it is Clock Town that is closest to my ancient heart.

I knew the land before the city was built and have known all of its inhabitants as I have watched over all in Termina. You may wonder how a chunk of stone suspended in the sky knows every kind of being in the world. When one is as old as the sky, one finds it hard to speak of Time and relationships in human terms. Observing the beings of the land is all I have to do, really. Even as they exist and exit quickly – if I could blink my eyes, I'd find a generation gone by the time I'd opened them – the connection between me and those that look up to me is strong because it is the only thing that exists for me. It helps, perhaps, that the world I watch over is a small one. There are some lands beyond the swamp, the mountains and the canyon, and the sea stretches out beyond the horizon that is seen from the shore, but I have the knowledge that mine is a cozy little universe.

Children wonder if they could fly up to meet me, to explore my surface, to meet the man-in-the-moon, innocent face to snarling face. When they grow up, they build their festival towers higher and higher.

The clock tower has been the tallest structure in Termina built by mortal hands for many, many years.

I am being inexorably drawn to it. I have been descending my heavens gradually, closing in toward the earth of Clock Town as fast as I can drop. I am mercifully slowed by the resistance of the air, its substance as thick to me as mud is to my little people on Termina's surface. A voice calls to me, telling me that the tiny lives I watch over are lives in vain. It tells me that my life is meaningless, since I am merely a stone in the sky, cursed to watch the flickering of candles that go out too soon, the growth and death of insects – for they are as insects, all. I've always enjoyed the humming of chirping of insects in the night, so I do not know why my thoughts have turned so dark as to want to destroy everything.

He calls to me. The ancient voice like smoke in the mind… I know it. It speaks to me and it sings to me, that voice of an ancient and powerful demon, a deity of destruction sealed long ago by a clever hero by the will of the Goddess of Time and the Four Giants. The ancient one is older than even I am, older than the Sun, older than the stars and older than the sky. The smoke swirls within my heart, urging me to give into my hunger… my desire to consume the world in the great equality of Death.

Consume…consume everything!

I am trying to resist. The people below pass with the days and I will eventually see them all Equal, but they are precious to me as they are. There are many people I can see clearly in my little Clock Town now that I have started to dip to the level of the cold clouds. I am surprised that the tide of the Zoras' ocean hasn't reacted violently to my proximity.

I can see a group of young boys in town – I have felt the energies of their existence. One is a neglected child. One has no parents at all. The others manage to sneak away from their families and educators frequently, intent upon keeping their friendships and their secret business. Many in the town dismiss them as hoodlums, but they spend most of their time finding people's lost pets, or giving listening ears to adults who find their adult-problems far too complicated to talk about to children. Many people are gathering their belongings and fleeing to the outer lands now, for they see that there is something gravely wrong with me. No one, so far, has come to gather any of these children to try to take them somewhere safe. People who are preparing for flight just pass them by, not even asking them if they have anywhere to go or anyone to be with. It has always amazed me how humans can commit the cruelest crimes out of sheer ignorance and apathy.

The builders are still busily constructing the festival tower for this year's Carnival of Time. The boss shouts angrily, scolding his men for their fear. They have been urging the Carnival on and insisting that citizens stay in town. I look down at them with my angry face and feel genuinely angry. They are dooming many people.

I have already fallen out of orbit. If I fall completely, I do not know if any small bit of my tiny universe will be left. I do not know if the results of my unwilling suicide will affect other universes. There may be a chance for some if they flee. Maybe. Probably not. They could still try.

Someone's been cursed into a form unfamiliar to him and is hiding away from his lover. Like the others, an innocent criminal breaking someone's heart for lack of courage.

Of course there is the true criminal, a man who might celebrate my fall if he were paying attention because the aftermath might be one that favors scavengers. He is looting even now, before the disaster.

The town is full of shopkeepers who refuse certain kinds of people out of mistrust.

Some drown their sorrows at the bar that serves special milk. I know that some speak of fleeing and others do not care.

A few citizens stay in town, feeling duty-bound to the people they take care of and do services for, wishing to flee, looking up at my angry face that used to chase away cosmic dangers for them.

There's a kid I've never seen or felt before who carries a small sword and a shield that looks too large for him. His energy seems to match his equipment. He feels older than he is, yet just the right age, somehow. He seems especially disturbed by me, like a child who never heard the legend about my face. He doesn't even seem to belong in my tiny universe. He's rather cruel to that one yappy dog that keeps to the center of town, picking him up and throwing him into puddles. Ah, yes – the warrior child holds the same energy as a little Deku Scrub boy I've seen around and the Deku was attacked and bitten by the dog. From what I can sense of that stranger-child, he looks innocent, but is fierce.

The dog, of course, feels a need to protect its territory from Deku Scrubs. It had a bad experience with Dekus when it was a young pup. It also has the canine instinct to mark territory upon trees and things that are reasonably similar to trees.

I feel hopelessness creeping in. I can feel and even now see the mask that was made of the remains of the destruction-god Majora. It is being worn by a creature-child in so much pain the Mask has seen fit to make the child's broken heart a vessel. As the Goddess of Time works with chronos and kairos and as the benevolent spirits work with nature and the elements thereof, Majora's medium is despair.

I understand my plight now that I have sensed the pain of the little one. The child felt like he had been abandoned. His heart was filled with emptiness. He had been eased for a while by a pair of caring friends, but he remained an outcast from society and never could understand why his former friends had left him. He was a child with no face cursed to twilight immortality. The Mask had entranced him, offering him a new face. Once attached, that parasitic demon found a way to dig deep into the boy's heart. The child's despair-born desires were at least as dark as my own. Revenge, attention… childish wishes… and then there was the darkness the boy shared with me, brought out by Majora's curling around our minds: Loneliness that drove us mad enough to not want anything to exist anymore.

Wherever Death may take the spirit of a moon, I do not care… Increasingly, I am losing my ability to care. The child taunts the observatory telescope. Majora lets him play even as the child's heart is his. The demon has let some of the mind remain; allowing the child to retain an illusion of his own innocence to be crushed once he's realized what it means to destroy everything. Knowing Majora, that demon would let the poor child survive to see the aftermath.

The desire to die and the desire to consume are ever growing. I am becoming not myself. I am no longer Termina's reliable old Moon. I see the town and the fields beyond it laid out before me. While I am still able to, I do one important thing.

I weep.

My tears fall like hot rain. They are stone, like my face, but smooth and blue. I know that they are prized gems, but they are rare as I seldom have reason to cry. I let my last tear drop, right onto the observatory grounds. I know that if the pull of my body and the lust for devastation that is taking over my mind come to their conclusion, it will be very soon before I cannot even express the slightest of sorrow.

I regret what I am about to do to you, my beautiful Termina and my wonderful Clock Town. I have given my final tear while I still can regret. At the very least, if I am consumed by the desire to consume you, we will be at least equal in Death.

END.