Chapter 1: Consequences
Somewhere near the heart of the light world, north of Ordon and south of King Ralis' domain, a quiet phenomenon was beginning its journey from the bottom cloud layer to the surface of the earth, there to descend without warning on the kingdom of Hyrule and its surrounding provinces. The first flurries reached ground level at about two in the morning, settling on the roofs of houses, coating the streets of Castle Town in a mantle of freezing cold. It crowned the heads of fountains and outdoor statues with glistening white and wrapped the land in velvet silence, so that barely a sound could be heard no matter where you stood.
The realm's inhabitants were mostly unaware of this. Most of them were long asleep, it being nearly two hours past midnight in the onset of winter. One in particular was not, and so he was perhaps the only member of the audience at this opening concert of the season's symphony orchestra. Not the best spectator, perhaps, as he paid little heed to the tiny heralds of winter that pressed gentle feather touches to his exposed face and fingers, contact with his body heat transforming each flake to water almost instantly. He seemed to be in a hurry to finish saddling the horse who was stamping her hooves on the frosty ground in an effort to improve circulation to her extremities.
Link growled low in frustration as his numb fingers slipped once again while attempting to buckle Epona's bridle. There had been a time when this process would not even have been necessary, but his warping days were behind him and the Hero of Light was forced to travel step by step, the way regular mortals did. No more zipping from place to place, crossing dimensions, hitting up Snowpeak for soup and a snowboarding race with the yetis, and still making it to Lake Hylia in time for an after-dinner swim with King Ralis of the Zoras. Not that he'd ever had time for social meals and recreational swimming in his save-the-world days, but he had to admit to one or two fantasies about what life would be like after he was through.
He would not have imagined it like this. It was this particular keen sense of disillusionment which had prompted his midnight ride in the first place, as it had done on previous occasions. Having finally finished preparing Epona, he was now in the midst of galloping across Hyrule Field with no particular end in mind, barely aware of the wind biting through his tunic and whipping snowflakes across his vision. Inside, Link was in another place entirely, and this made him impervious not only to the weather, but to everything else the cold and the night threw across his heedless course.
He didn't see the river rushing up to meet his horse's hooves. He didn't even flinch as the faultlessly obedient mare plunged, on his careless direction, into the swollen tide and both of them were deluged in freezing water. They were climbing up the far bank before the facts of their situation even hit him, bringing with them a dull, belated spike of worry that faded as soon as it came.
He was almost too far gone to care.
Telma was awakened from deep sleep by an intermittent knock at her bar's front door, barely heavy enough to register in her ear; indeed, had it not been followed by another within a few seconds, she might not have woken up at all. Wrapped in a dressing gown and in no little ill humor, she opened the door a minute or two later to the alarming sight of the Hero soaked and staggering on her front doorstep, his lips blue with cold.
"Epona," he coughed without preamble, clutching the doorpost for support.
"Link!" Telma exclaimed, horrified. "Honey, what's happened?"
"Went for a ride," he explained, barely able to speak in complete sentences around his violently chattering teeth. "Fell in the river. Snowing outside. I'm fine. Epona's outside in the courtyard. Can you see to her?"
"Not until you get out of those clothes and into something dry," Telma said firmly, grabbing him by the shoulders and hauling him into the warm indoors. "'Went for a ride.' I'll give you 'went for a ride,' and no mistake. You'll be the death of me, boy, if you don't end up killing yourself through sheer reckless behavior first."
Shoving a set of dry men's clothing at him (one of the spares she kept on hand for the occasional guest who stayed the night) along with a few more well-deserved admonishments, Telma headed outside to see to the ill-used horse standing in her courtyard. By the time she returned, Link was mostly dried off, and insisted on knowing how Epona was faring.
"She's fine, no thanks to you," Telma assured him. "'Went for a ride.' A swim, more like! In the middle of a snowstorm! Anyhow, I put her up with a neighbor who has a few stalls built onto his inn, though I had to pay a far sight more than the travelers who had their mounts there. He didn't like being woken in the middle of a winter's night any more than I did, and when he saw your horse, he wanted to know what on Farore's green earth I'd done to her!"
"Was she - " Link began, but Telma cut him off again.
"He and his stable hands got her dried off and warm, and there didn't seem to be any lasting harm done. No thanks to you," she added once again.
"I'm s - "
"You had better be. Now," she snapped, sitting down across from him with a particularly fearsome scowl. "Explain yourself, and I'll have none of this 'went for a ride' business. Tell me what happened and why, from beginning to end. No evasions or I'll have your hide, and believe me, dark forces will look tame next to what I've got in store for you."
"Um," said Link, but got no further before she was off again.
"Really, what in Din's name were you thinking? Nayru's love, boy. This is so unlike you!"
"I know," he mumbled contritely. "I was…I'm sorry."
Head bowed, hunched in a small wooden chair by the fireside, the Hero's aspect was much more bedraggled than Telma was used to; even ragged with the wounds of a hundred different fights, the fate of several worlds resting on his shoulders, he had always seemed somehow invulnerable before now. It was something about his eyes, usually so piercing and intense, and a certain weariness in the set of his shoulders. Haunted at best, at worst defeated. In spite of herself, Telma's heart went out to the miserable figure in front of her who was, after all, barely more than eighteen years old.
"Aw, honey, don't look like that," she begged, putting a reassuring hand on his back. "Surely it's not all that bad."
"I hear her, Telma," Link said abruptly, raising his head to look her directly in the eye. "All the time, calling me. Searching. I can't even go to sleep without hearing her voice in my head. Or sometimes I see myself doing all the things we did, but alone, without her to help me, and I die. Every time. And Ganondorf wins. It's like my mind's way of reminding me that I would - that all of us would be dead or worse if not for her. What if something happens, like he said it would, and I can't stop it on my own?"
"Link, honey, I'm sure - "
"But that's not the worst part," he continued, as if she hadn't even spoken. "Sometimes I dream I'm the one looking, scouring everywhere we went and more places besides, walking the whole world over and I still can't find her. And then I wake up, and it's like I wasn't even dreaming. Because it's true. I'm looking, and I can't find her, and I need her, Telma. Never mind the light world or the twilight, I need her."
He stopped speaking and put his head in his hands. The Triforce mark on the left one looked almost transparent, an illusion created by the firelight. A few long moments slipped by in silence.
"Honey, I don't really know what to tell you," Telma said slowly. "You two did a lot together. You saved the whole world, and each other to boot, several times over. Bonds like that aren't meant to be severed in a matter of a few seconds…break something that strong that quickly, and both ends get all twisted up. They get warped on the inside as well as out. I think that's what's been the matter with you lately, and if I know anything, you can bet it's happening to her, too. I don't know Midna very well, but I can at least tell you that she's probably even worse off than you are."
Link was silent, not the worst reaction to her words, but not the one Telma had been hoping for, either.
"You should do something about it," she prompted. "Something big and heroic and dangerous, but" - she was suddenly stern again - "not a midnight gallop through a river in the middle of a snowstorm. Think of what you've put poor Epona through, not to mention me. Now, you're going to bed, and no arguments!"
There were none. Link did meekly as he was instructed and, having been installed on a spare mattress near the warm hearth, seemed within minutes to be asleep. Telma, however, knew he was not, because she could see his hands clutch into fists beneath the blankets, and occasionally his eyes would flicker open to stare up at the rafters on her ceiling.
Soon, however, she herself was back in her own bed and drifting into sleep, in spite of the troubled thoughts which had taken up residence in the particular corner of her mind she set aside for worrying about things she couldn't help. One of the last thoughts that occurred to her before she fell unconscious was an especially sad understanding of Link's situation.
Telma was an optimist, but privately, she had always thought that most heroes seemed more frail in their quiet moments than other folk did. Perhaps this was because, unlike ordinary people, heroes never did get happy endings of their own.
notes: so this fic is back from the dead and (worse?) better than ever. I first posted this, under the extremely original title "Of Light and Shadow" almost two years ago. Since then, I've grown as a writer and new aspects of TP canon have been revealed with the HD release; subsequently, this fic is getting a makeover and a new direction with the return of my inspiration for its world. for those of you who are new, this is a post-TP continuation fic with an eventual Midlink pairing that centers around the Twilight Realm and will eventually go deeper into some obscure aspects of LoZ canon. In a sense, this is really the Legend of Midna, though I left that part out in the title to avoid excessive cliches. I hope you'll stick with me for the ride; regardless, thanks for reading!