A.N. Okay, to the Guest who asked me if i'm giving up on this story HECKS NO! i just have to move. and moving is anarduous task i really hate doing. anyway, i'm in the process of slowing moving past a corner that i had written myself into.

On another note, check out the new photo i have for the story cover, i drew it myself ^u^ i have better pictures of Ember and shad, i can't stop drawing these two, seriously, i just need them to be together.

anyway on to the next chapter. Now remember when i said things won't be the same between Ember and Shad? Yeah, well this happens, so have fun reading.

Ember woke in her bed facing the wall. She couldn't remember going to sleep. Perhaps she had forgotten? Wouldn't be the first time she lost time.

"Ember." A soft voice from behind her sounded, she knew the voice well. Shad's voice. She turned over and sat up to see him sitting on his own bed across the way.

"Shad, what are you doing awake? It's the middle of the night" She tried looking around, but somehow she couldn't focus enough on anything. Her attention returned to Shad, he was easy to see, easy to focus on. He still hadn't said anything. "Shad?" Silently he stood and walked over to her, coming close enough for her to need to lean back out of discomfort.

"Ember, I told you I would do whatever you asked of me." His words, slow, almost whisper. He crawled onto the bed, making her press against the wall. Her heart thudded loudly in her chest at his close proximity. "Please," He brushed his hand across her cheek, sending shivers through her. "Ask me to kiss you." Her face bloomed instantly in pink

"W-what? S-shad I-"

"Please, Ember. I need it." Her chest ached. She longed to feel the brush of his lips against her, but where had this come from? Had that night affected him more than she thought? Sure it had an unexpected outcome, but enough to have this adverse reaction later on? It's not like she didn't want it, but she'd rather it be out of genuine affection rather than lust.

"I need you." He was barely apart from her now, eyes half lidded voice barely audible "My Ember."

It was all the push she needed, despite her reservations.

"Please. Kiss me."

He closed the gap, gently at first, laying his lips across hers, holding her face in his hands, lingering as she returned the affection. Suddenly, he became more firm, more urgent. There was a certain need behind the kiss. A want for more than just simple touches. Ember found herself complying to his demand of her love, grabbing on to the back of his neck and pulling him forward to her. He wrapped one hand around the small of her back, pulling her up on her knees so he could press more of her against him.

She gasped as his hand went to the back of her head, gripping her hair tightly and pulling so that her head tilted upward. His mouth found it's way to her neck, where he nipped at it in the same spot she had bit him not long ago. She breathed heavily, her hands digging into him. She could feel him smile against the crook of her neck, happy with her reaction. Then, just as she had done before, he bit firmly on her, causing the same electrifying pleasure course through her entire body.

"Sha~ad!"

Ember jolted up, face hot, breath heavy, sweat beginning to form. She threw the blankets off of her in attempt to cool herself down and turned her legs over the side of the bed. Leaning over, she tried to catch her breath and clear her head of the excitement of her dream. Her hands went up to rub over her eyes, then settled on her temples, holding her head up.

"Nightmares?"

Ember lifted her head to meet Shad's concerned gaze. He was sitting on the bed against the wall, his knees bent up, and his father's book nestled open on them. The heat came back to her face. She shifted her gaze down to the side, unable to look at him. She was afraid if she met his eyes for any longer, he would somehow know what had gotten her so riled up.

"S-something like that."

A moment's silence.

"Want to talk about it?"

"N-no!" She alarmed, snapping her head up again. Then quickly turned her voice down. "No, it's not really anything to worry about. Just. It surprised me more than anything."

"I see, I just thought maybe it was something worse, you seemed troubled while you slept."

Ember's face went into alarm.

"I-i didn't say anything did I?" She cautiously asked.

"Not anything of note, you were just restless." He closed his book and moved to the edge of his own bed, sitting his feet down to the floor.

'Oh thank the goddesses.' Ember allowed herself to relax and take a deep breath.

"I've noticed you do tend to speak in your sleep." She tensed back up. He read this discomfort. "It's okay, whatever your worried about me hearing, I don't believe you said. It was mainly talking about clockwork."

That's right. Before she had this other dream, she was as a young girl, her father showing her how gears turned in synchronization. It reminded her a way to calm herself down and slow her ever beating heart.

Ember leaned down to the bag she unceremoniously tossed by the bed, and rummaged through, trying to find what she was looking for. She pulled out an old copper pocket watch. There was no design on it, just a simple flat surface, shining it metallic color.

"Is that the one you've been working on?" Shad asked curiously, briefly curious as to why she would bring it along.

"No this was my first piece of clockwork I ever made." She opened the back, exposing the gears underneath and wound it up. "My father helped me build it when I didn't have the knowledge enough to do it on my own." Releasing, her hand from the winding mechanism. The constant ticking and turning of gears started, quiet, but loud enough to hear if you stayed silent. She crossed her legs on the bed and just held it in her hands, closing her eyes as she listened to the mechanical rhythm of the watch.

"Ember?"

She shushed him. Continuing to sit in silence, the binaural beating lulling her into comfort. Shad crossed a leg over the other and watched her in her meditation, finding it a little strange and wondering what she was listening for.

After a minute of silence, save for the tick tick tick of the gadget in her hands, Ember snapped the watch shut, and took a deep breath in and out, returning the time-piece back where it came from

"I don't mean to be rude, but would you mind explaining what that was all about?"

"Sorry. The sound calms me, helps me concentrate my thoughts. It's a little weird I know." She tucked her legs up, wrapping her arms around them.

"No, not at all. It would make sense, since you've been around it for as long as you have." He paused. "I think it's quite cute."

Ember's face grew hot as her brow furrowed.

"No, 'cute' implies something you would find a child doing for their own humor, this is meditative. I'm not a child, Shad."

"Yes, of course. How silly of me." He let a small laugh escape his lips.

Ember exhaled the breath she had held from apprehension and tried to change the subject.

"So why are you still up? It has to be late into the night."

"You haven't realized it's morning yet? For a clockmaker, you have a bad sense of time, dear Ember. It's quite contradictory."

"Then you wake ridiculously early. As for my sense of time, it's precise when there's a window and I can actually tell it's morning. Until then, the haze of coming out of the dreamworld is going to hinder that ability. Not everyone is use to waking at the exact same time everyday like you. Regardless, if it is in fact day as you claim it to be, then let's not dawdle." Ember rose from the bed, grabbing her bag from the floor. "I suggest you change into something less heavy. We are going to be working at the base of a dormant volcano you know."

The scrapyard had grown less plentiful than Ember last remembered. Where once there had been towering piles of various degrees of scrap, now stood foothills of nearly useless piles of rust. Course the last time she had been was before the rock creatures she knew as Gorons started re-working in their mines. They too needed the parts themselves for new platforms to get around the caverns they mined for the rocks they ate as food. She wondered if that was all they consumed or if they needed any kind of food sustenance of the more human variety. If that was ll they ate, why did they have to get it from that specific place. Then again, for all she knew, to them it was the best tasting, and anything else would be like eating from the trash. Just thinking about taking a bite out of such hard sediment hurt Ember's teeth and she pondered at

"How do you think they digest it?" She asked Shad, quickly realizing she hadn't bothered to explain her thought processing. " The Goron's diet I mean. How do you think they digest the rocks they eat?" Ember had found herself distracted with the culture that the rock formed beings lived by. They were supposed to be scoping out good piles of various metals that seemed promising. Though since a lot of what they could see was either rusted or not a strong enough metal, she found it hard to pay attention. It was, in her mind, unimportant to take in the surroundings if all she was going to get was junk.

"Being made of rock themselves, I'm sure it's just like you or I with regular food." Shad answered, trying to keep himself focused on looking for what they needed to smelt into what was going to make up the flying contraption. When Ember had told him to dress light, it hadn't crossed his mind that she would as well. Usually he was used to seeing her in modesty, usually in a long sleeve shirt and a vest if nothing else. Though she still had on her sleeveless duster for Din know what reason, she no longer donned the usual professional attire he saw her in everyday. Instead a form fitting tank the revealed exactly how her body was shaped. It didn't help Shad to not think about her in the way he yearned to ever since the mark she had given him. Forcing his unnatural feelings down, he forced himself to focus on the only admiration he knew was okay, for her intellect. Any other feeling, he figured was, just a product of a lust-like side effect of that event a few nights ago.

"I wonder if they drink lava like water."

"Perhaps. Though, I have to remind you we aren't here for the culture. You still haven't told me what kind of metal you're looking for"

"Yes, right. I nearly forgot."

"It's a good thing I'm here then, how you got along without me to keep you on track before, I haven't the slightest."

"Then I should be grateful for you voice of reason."

"The metal though." He reminded her.

"We need something that won't corrode very easily. Something with a good strength-elasticity ratio."

"What about gold? A litle extravagant, but it's flexible."

"True, but believe it or not, it's also a very weak metal. There isn't a pure metal with exactly what we need, so we're going to have to collect various kinds to be smelted together to get the desired effect we want. Though I'm not exactly brushed up on what metals mix well so I really wouldn't know what to look for."

Ember stopped and glanced to a towering pile of scrap to her side. It was promising of more usable materials closer to the bottom of the pile. Right in the middle stuck a long pole and Ember figured she could use the leverage from it to topple the topside off so she could get better at what was underneath.

"Wouldn't it make sense to find that out first before coming out in this uncomfortably hot environment?"

Ember went to grab the metal stick, wincing and withdrawing her hand quickly when she realized it had grown hot from being out in the sun.

"I hadn't actually registered the thought until I said it." She removed a small tube from her duster's inner pocket, tucking it into her belt, before wrapping the clothing around the hot material. "Hind-sight is 20/20 Shad. Maybe I should borrow your glasses." She set the bracing her foot on the most stable thing she could find and started to force the thing out sideways, trying to jostle as much on top as she could. "Anyway I figure we could gather what ever usable things we can find and ask the residents here what they can do with it." Slowly the pipe began to slide with a grind.

Shad was about to ask is she needed help until a disruption from the top of the pile sounded, catching his attention.

"Ember, I don't think you can do that." He steped closer to her, eyes up, watching the more than heavy alloys threatening to fall.

"Of course I can, I've almost got it free." Her continued pull only shifted everything more.

"No I mean-" He was interrupted by the start of clambering steels from overhead. He reached out, quickly grabbing the back of her tank shirt, yanking her his way. He wrapped his arm he grabbed her with around her arms and the other protectively around her middle, keeping her out of harms way as the death trap she had set off crashed to the ground with a loud grinding thud, "You shouldn't do that." He finished as everything quieted again. "Are you okay?" He turned his face so his forehead pressed to her temple.

"A little shaken, but yes." she responded a little in shock from the sudden breath of his voice in her ear.

Shad breathed a sigh of releif and on instinctual impulse, pulled her ever so slightly back into him.

"Thank Farore." He could feel her pulse beating furiously through her stomach where his arm laid. He figured it had been from the sudden rush of almost being crushed under a pile of metallic debris. Though in actuality, she was more focus on how he had her enveloped, his tendency for extended contact was more than welcome to Ember at this particular moment. When he tugged her back by the shirt, it had rode up just enough to give bare skin contact when he encircled his other arm around her. Ember allowed herself a moment to enjoy being as close to him as she was before she reluctantly let her professional side take over.

"Shad. You're doing it again. Please let go." He quickly pulled out from around her, stepping to the side so he could at least see her face. Ember allowed her arms to drop to her sides and as always, she was saddened at the disconnect.

"Sorry, I just saw-" He picked at his hands, fidgeting. " . . . you were in the way . . . it was falling. I didn't want you to get hurt."

"Okay, Shad, calm down." She put her hands up to stop his everlasting apology. He quieted though still fidgeted slightly. "Thanks for pulling me back, but really it's fine. Though I could stand to be more perceptive."

"I worry your recklessness is going to get you seriously hurt at some point."

"You're a little late to be worrying about that." Ember strode over to the edge of the avalanche aftermath, bending over to pick up the small tube that had fallen loose from her belt when she had been yanked back. "Here hold this while I fish for my duster." She held it out for him to take.

"What is it?" he asked, grabbing the small cylinder and examining it, it looked like a simple round casing, holding something inside.

"It's a shot of adrenalin." Ember answered, starting to rummage through what had almost fallen on her so retrieve her clothing. "I keep one on me at all times."

Shad pulled on one end, opening the small case in the middle, revealing a small needle inside containing a clear liquid.

"What for exactly?"

"I've had my fair share of close calls before." She reached her hand down, weaving it through the scrap, feeling the stiff fabric she was familiar with and grabbing onto it. "When I was building my electric weapon, I wasn't unscathed when messing with the coils. Got a terrifying shock and sent myself into a kind of cardiac arrest, nearly stopping my heart." She pause, pulling her duster free and moving to put it on. "I didn't have anything to really fix it at the time, so I had to sock myself a second time to re-stabilize. I very unpleasant feeling, I may tell you." She leaned against a solid stock of iron, putting her hands in her coat pockets. "Once was bad enough on accident, but to have to do so gain on my own. I'd rather not go through it again if I can help it. So after that whole shebang settled, I ordered a large case of those shots so that I may have one on me at all times for when I need it."

Shad closed the tube casing and handed it back to her. Finding himself fearing for her and at the same time bewildered by her strange habits.

"You should really take care of yourself better. All this abuse you subject your body to has to be taking it's toll."

"It's a dangerous trade. The hazards in this field are copious. Even if it may seem pointless to have such a thing as a single shot I may never use on my person, it's good to be prepared just in case. Always have a contingency plan, Shad. Live by that and you'll never be unprepared for a situation."

"The effort for readiness is commendable, but you cant possibly think of every out."

"No, but I get as close as possible, thinking of every small thing that can go wrong. There are thing I do on habit that may seem unnecessary, but it's kind of my own warped version of a medical kit."

"Ah, well hopefully the time will never arrive when you have to use it."

Ember nodded in agreement, looking at the ground. She absentmindedly grabbing her tank shirt where her heart laid, remembering the agonizing pain she had been in.

It had been the first test she conducted with her electric device. Foolishly not checking to make sure it was completely covered with rubber where any part of her would be contacting with metal. As soon as she connected those two raw metal prongs to the rest of the bracer, an intense heat shot through her, failing her heart. It had felt like eons before she was able to regain her wits enough to understand the grave mistake she had make. All the while trying and failing to pull in a proper breath, her chest feeling like someone was slamming a brick into it over and over again in sporadic rhythm. The only chance she had out of it was to jolt her heart again to set it right.

A hand on her shoulder fazed her out of the past and she looked over at Shad, he had joined her in leaning against the iron.

"Well it's a good thing you have me here now, who else is going to watch over you?" He smiled to her.

'Damn that smile, it may not be a work related thing that's going to set my heart out of sorts again.' Her hear fluttering ached just a little more than usual, effected by her electric memory. Still, she managed to keep her outer visage of calm.

"So then you're my own personal guardian angel."

"Y-yes, I suppose you can make that parallel." he swallowed, taking his hand off her shoulder. Unsure why the prospect would make him so unsettled. Her putting the words so outright, he felt a need to be the one to protect her. While Ember may be able to take care of herself in her own outlandish ways, and even if someone else were there to look after her, he wouldn't be satisfied without knowing firsthand she wasn't endangering herself.

"Alright, enough dawdling." She picked herself up. "We should start actually gathering material before the day is lost."

Silently agreeing, he moved to start picking through for the most intact metals they could find. Piling what they could find into an open space away from the rest.

Guardian angel, Ember's guardian angel. To be hers whenever she needed him as she could be his.

He forced the thought down, knowing it was a fleeting feeling birthed from the still lingering effects of 'that night'. Refusing to acknowledge the base instinct that came with being male for the sake of reserving his respected status with her. She deserved his best, and he was going to make sure that happened.

In his distraction, he failed to keep caution of sharp edges and in grabbing a large sheet of what he figured to be iron, he slipped his hand, slicing across his palm. The sudden pain made him yelp and retract his hand.

"Shad? Did you cut yourself?" Ember called from a little away, a few metal rods in hand.

"I don't think-" He cut himself off, looking at his palm. It was soaked in a red warm liquid that was dripping through his fingers.

Blood

Shad became queasy. His hand stung unbearably as he held it awkwardly palm up in front of him, watching as the liquid dripped from his fingers landing with a small -plink- onto the piece that had cut his hand. The sight of it made him feel like he was going to pass out the longer he looked.

My blood.

As he began to lose balance, hands found themselves on his shoulder leading him away from where he was standing.

There's so much.

He felt his stomach begin to lurch and his vision start to blotch out. He had to look away, or he knew he would faint. Someone was holding him steady, setting him down to the ground and he was thankful to not have to worry about his weak legs.

Ember

He realized she had been talking to him, though he hadn't registered she had even spoken.

"Shad, Are you're okay?" He didn't answer. She took his face in her hands and forced him to look at her. His eyes were dazed, unfocused, he might as well have been looking at empty air from behind his specs. "Shad."

He gave a nauseated hum in response.

"Come on, Shad, try to focus." She tapped his cheek with her palm firmly a few times. It seemed to help him gather his wits a little. "There you are. Good, now I'm going to ask again. Are you okay?"

"I feel sick." He answered weakly.

"Right, you must be Hemophobic." She knew he kept some medical supplies in the pouches attached to his belt so it was all reflex that led her to reaching into one, searching for some bandages. "I would have never guessed that from you." She took her water canteen from her hip and held out his hand, rinsing it off. Shad winced and tried to jerk away, but she held firm onto him and started to wrap his palm.

Once the cut was covered and little red could be seen, save for what leaked through a small spot the soaked through on the bandage, Shad seemed to come out of his anxiety trance. Ember returned her hands to the sides of his face to make sure he was doing alright.

"Shad." She started to slide her hands down to his shoulders. He quickly grabbed her wrists before she could run them over the most sensitive spot in the crook of his neck and looked her in the eye.

"Don't. Please." He released his grip when she pulled away. After a moment of silence, and letting his unease feeling settle, he spoke again. "I'm not very good around blood."

"So I see." She stood, locking her knees for a moment to stretch them out from crouching in from of the young lad who's eyes still hadn't left her face. "Maybe I should have brought gloves."

"I'll get you your own pair of glasses then." He tried to joke. It took Ember a moment to figure out what he had been talking about.

"Oh right, hindsight." She chuckled a bit. "Take it easy for now, I'll continue on for bit. Then we'll go request some assistance from the Gorons." She pat his shoulder twice as she passed him.

Shad sat, stewing in his own thoughts. He leaned his elbows on his knees and turned his hands over, examining the bandage Ember had applied. Once again he was the one to fall apart while she seemed to stay composed the whole time. Always knowing what to do in a situation to defuse it. Maybe that was the part of her that always needed a plan B for everything. Regardless, he wasn't functional just because of a little red and wondered how he ever thought he could be around to keep Ember out of harms way. He was no guardian angel, he couldn't be the one to protect her.

He pressed his good hand onto the palm of the other one, wincing when a twinge of pain shot into his arm. It took his mind off of the young inventor for a few moments, letting him remember the relationship between them was merely friendly. His attachment to her was formed from their mutual interest in the field of work they both strive toward. They overlapped too much for him to be disinterested and he had been letting a small incident warp that into what he constantly told people it wasn't. It seemed Ember hadn't let it effect her as much and if she could still have an air of control, then so could he. With his vow of self control in mind, he pushed off from his knees and continued to help gather scraps.

i can see shad being faint at the sight of blood. Anyway, Ember to the rescue ^u^ and you get to see Shad opening up more to the idea of acctually liking our little ball of flame.

anyway as always please review, i need story attention. also, i'm completly caught up with the story i have written, so come monday when i start having days off, i'll start writting again, not for you, but for me, they need to be the adorable not-couple i imagine them to be.