Disclaimer: see prev chaps. Title: Cross My Heart & Hope to Fly by The Courteeners.
Notes: Look at me, being productive :P
Sheik found her first, after soberly stealing a moped and racing through the streets near the arts district. I'd gotten the call on my near-dead cell about seventeen seconds later, which happened to consist exclusively of: "SHE'S HERE. I'M HERE TOO. WE'RE AT THE, UH, YEAH. GO TO SIXTIETH AND ELDIN." I then had to catch a bus and very impatiently ride it to the identified corner, and in the meantime, annoy three different passengers with my incessant foot-tapping and nervous scribbling into the tiny notebook I kept with me at all times.
Back in college, when I studied abroad in Kakariko (whereupon I met the lovely, loud-mouthed Ruto), I bought a small memo pad for lecture notes. Lectures at the City University never seemed to hold my attention for very long, mostly because Professor Talon droned on and on about useless things like how to pasteurize milk, and why we pasteurize milk, and how to castrate horses. Consequently, I didn't see the logic in carrying around countless textbooks that would never be opened during the entire in-class portion of the semester, so I assuaged my inner anal-retentive student by buying the notebook. It fit conveniently in a shirt or jeans pocket, and, in a pinch, I could tuck it into the band of my pants, but after Ruto's unwelcome commentary, such behaviour was never repeated.
All of that extraneous exposition held me over until the final stop, whereupon I vaulted off the bus and into the busy street, my head whipping around frantically in search of Sheik's ugly shirt. A tiny bolt of fear struck me as I realized I might not find them – what if I wandered this corner for a good hour, while they gallivanted elsewhere? What if it was too late, and I never saw her again? Swallowing nervously, I completed another sweep of the immediate area, and just barely caught sight of a familiar flash of scarlet.
"Midna!" I sprinted across the street to what looked like a hairdressing boutique and jammed my face against the glass. Inside and chatting animatedly with a woman, sat the princess, her hands fluttering around her head as she tried to convey the hairstyle she wanted. The woman, short and dumpy and wearing a shirt emblazoned with TELMA'S, smiled widely before setting scissors to hair.
The café across the street had its midmorning rush crowded inside, but the outside dining area seemed vacant enough for a coffee stop and a stakeout. Considering Sheik's inability to show, I assumed he was out getting drunk at some nearby bar, or getting thrown into the back of a cop car because the owner of the moped caught up with him this time. I groaned inwardly at the second possibility; I did not have the time, the patience, or the interest to spin a ridiculous yarn to the police about a nonexistent mental disorder or something else equally ridiculous and apocryphal. By this time, Sheik should've had his own personal officer.
I sighed heavily and silenced my cell phone, just in case. He wouldn't interrupt this – if he wasn't here now, I wasn't going to waste time looking for him. Stealing a glance into the shop again, I saw that Midna had moved to the counter and appeared to be paying. The woman from earlier held what looked like a newspaper, but I couldn't see Midna's response or expression due to the glare on the glass. By the time the shop bells jingled, I'd casually wandered over to that side of the street, and stood waiting for her with a fresh cup of coffee.
"Nice hair," I quipped at her.
Startled, she flinched slightly before her eyes widened in recognition. "Oh. Link! What are you doing here?"
"I, uh, came to find you." I ducked my head in embarrassment, because it sounded like I really had been stalking her from across the street. Which I really had been doing, if I wanted to be honest with myself. I shifted nervously to one foot as I tried to formulate the proper words for a coherent conversation, but Midna beat me to it with a sweet smile and the initiation of a friendly stroll.
"Mission accomplished, then." She accepted the coffee with an adorably excited grin, a tiny flash of white, and immediately pressed the rim of the cup to her nose. I might've been more amused at her apparent joy over a simple beverage if I hadn't witnessed Sheik's overenthusiastic nuzzling of Jack Daniels a few nights ago. "I've never had this before."
"It's nothing fancy, just a smoothie. They call it a Red Potion, but it's just got apples in it."
Shaking her head, she inhaled in deeply twice, still grinning, and took a dainty sip. "Mundane to one is extraordinary to another," breathed Midna as her tongue explored the perimeter of her lips. "This is fantastic. Do I owe you…?"
I laughed. "No, you don't owe me. What would you pay me with?" I just barely avoided making a comment referencing anything from the Twili Treasury to the Family Sols. Sometimes being a reporter ruined everything, in the same way that reading the last page of a novel could ruin the ending; not only had I sat there watching her through the shop window, but I'd read her Wiki stub and anything else Google could turn up on her, excluding the Twili sites that banned my foreign IP address.
The general lack of information seemed unsettling. Zelda had at least fifty or more printed pages in her Wikipedia article, and yet, her Twili counterpart only had an 800-word stub? Granted, I was sure I'd find a similar dearth on Zelda if I had access to the Twili pages, but it still didn't settle well with me, predictably so. All of my research into Twili culture only ever ended in roadblocks when it came down to the intricacies and formalities of the monarchy. Maybe they treasured that too, like any other priceless jewel. At the same time, that lack of information made it that much easier for me to approach her as a person, since professions and/or backgrounds hadn't been breached in any previous conversation. This was a clean slate, the same sort of scenario that might have happened if we'd met in a noisy bar on any weekend… but with dramatic irony, kind of.
I jerked my head toward the street and pointed at the change she still held in her other hand. "So much for the taxi, huh?"
Midna actually blushed a scarlet-orange. "I wanted to walk."
"You're lost."
"No."
"Yes you are."
"No I'm- And what if I am, Mr. Link?" She pushed a finger against my chest. "What would you do about that?"
With my best smile, I swept my hands over the surrounding area and, as grandly as I could manage, bowed to kiss her hand. "Why, I'd take it upon myself to show you the sights. Hell, I haven't even seen some of the things this town has to offer. Call it an adventure."
She offered a coy smile, but inclined her head. Slowly but surely, she was leading me away from the salon, and very distantly, I made the connection between the paper and her startled reaction upon bumping into me outside. I could prod her about it, teasingly of course, but I didn't want to spoil the moment. Her painfully precise diction and uptight speech patterns were steadily crumbling into the comforting banter of colloquialisms. She still held her head high, and she still strutted regally, but I could overlook that; beggars couldn't be choosers, despite Sheik's logic. Goddesses, what was I getting myself into?
"An adventure," Midna stated matter-of-factly. "Another adventure shared by another Midna and another Link?"
"History does tend to repeat itself," I reasoned, smiling. "If there were ever a perfect time for such a repeated event, it's now."
A wicked grin caught her lips: "And if said repeated event should include shadow beasts?"
"Then your dashing Hylian hero will protect you."
She snorted at that, almost choking on her half-finished smoothie. "Some dashing hero you are. The real Link had a- wait one second. Hold this, please-" Without further warning, she shoved her cup at me and dashed off down the street, leaving me standing and staring in confusion. She was either making a very clumsy but effective break for it, or some other source of mischief had caught her eye. I had trouble following her because I kept looking for the long, red hair that had been shorn off into a modern pixie cut. The amateur profiler in me, courtesy of too many of Sheik's crime drama shows, suggested her haircut symbolized a kind of rebellion. Rebellion.
Hot damn, she was on the run, wasn't she?
Taking off in her general direction, the possibilities assaulted each other in a mental cloud of excitement. If she was on the run, that would explain her not having any cash or ID or something important, like an escort or security detail. It would explain her unwillingness to stay in our flat and the escape attempt. Maybe it even explained her hurried exit of Telma's.
I was jogging past one of the obnoxious street vendors when a hand snaked out and grasped my arm tightly. "Here!" she announced brightly, thrusting a handful of cheap plastic at me while simultaneously retrieving her smoothie. "I got you a hat, and a sword. They didn't have any shields, but I'm sure you can-"
"-use you," I finished for her. She'd bought one of those goddesses-damned windsock hats, and a rubbery replica of the Master Sword, complete with sticky ink that smeared from the sweat from my palms. "Anyone who happily gives anyone this shit should be used as a human shield."
"That's no way to talk to a lady." Nearly pouting, she sipped slowly at the last of the potion, and very slowly began grinning into the straw. "However, I'll forgive you if you don the Hero's Clothes."
I stared at her in disbelief. "You've got to be kidding me. I am not wearing that windsock."
"C'mon, Link. Where's your reenactment spirit?"
"I am not wearing that thing. Not even if Farore herself told me."
Midna started with that awful smile of hers again, with her lips curling so tightly around her teeth it seemed as though she had fangs. Wicked thing, she was. She snapped her fingers and the cup vanished in a puff of black energy, then reached out, gently took the hat from me, and pulled it over my head. The placement apparently didn't meet her standards, as she quickly grabbed the edge and tugged it until it sat at a jaunty angle. "There," she proclaimed happily. "Now you're the 'dashing hero' you insisted on being."
I clapped my hands together with mock-enthusiasm. "Oh, joy! Now I can live out my dream of being ten again! Wait a second, let me grab my Kokiri jacket, and we'll be off!" But I didn't remove the hat. It sat awkwardly at the back of my head; I could tell the elastic had been stretched to its greatest extent, seeing as it was meant for a kid, but I didn't move it. I couldn't. I felt like an idiot, but seeing that spark of life in her eyes, that flickering of some citrus-colored torch, utterly disabled the rational side of my brain. I liked it, in a sick way. A pretty girl had told me to do something ridiculous, and I'd taken her word and obeyed like the good little boy, the kind that was so whipped he even went along with seeing cheesy chick-flicks. Not that this would ever get that far. Not that there was a 'this.'
Knock on wood.
As she reached for the hat again, her fingers brushed my forehead and I shivered the slightest bit; Midna just bared her would-be fangs. The entire windsock-hat business began when Zelda or Midna or whatever other princess or other gorgeous female met Link, and a little too sweetly dressed him up and sent him on his way while still dazed by the contact. There was no doubt left in my mind. I'd have to talk to Sheik, but that would make an excellent spread once we got our acts together again.
She was giggling at me while I thought. Slack-jawed and flustered, I blinked to clear away the glassy-eyed look and offered her my own wolfish smirk. "Now that I've been appropriately costumed, shall we begin our adventure?"
