Review please! ^.^

Shadow

The cut on my hand proved to be a pain for work, especially since it was on my left hand, which was my dominant one. Malon only watched me try to shrug it off for two days like a real gimp before it got infected on the third and she snatched at my roughly bandaged hand to eye the bloodstains with a sniff. Then she took in my probably poorly hacked off hair and her nose wrinkled.

"That's it, I won't look at you any longer. Grab a chair, will you?"

"Why?"

"Because I'm your boss, now do it."

I did plenty of growling to that. No matter how use to being her farm slave I was, doing anything, no questions asked, because anyone told me just rubbed my nature wrong in every direction.

Nevertheless, I dropped the rake I had in the time (we were doing our daily mucking out of the stalls), took up her milking stool from the corner, and waited with it until she returned back into the barn with a pair of scissors, which I eyed distrustfully.

"Sit down."

"What are you going to do?"

"Fix your head. You look like you have a dead cat on it."

I snorted. "Never knew there was a dress code to shit scooping. What, am I going to scare the horses away?"

In answer she casually walked behind me and before I could even turn she had me tight by the collar and my butt thwacked down onto the stool. I winced plenty.

"Now, hold still. I wouldn't want to cut off the tip of your lovely long ears, now would I?"

I did my best hiss of disbelief, but did as she said, glaring at the ground as she did so until she pulled my head back by tugging on said ears.

"Wish my hair grew as fast as yours." she said.

I grunted. Better let her think it's natural. Though I didn't look forward to when she noticed I needed a cut every other week, if not every week, to keep it at any length shorter than Link's, at least shorter than his at the time of my creation. I had once played with the idea of cutting my originals hair in his sleep to see what would happen.

She took longer than I expected her to, and the feel of her fingers fluttering across my scalp to pinch out locks of hair was oddly soothing. I couldn't remember a time I had had anyone's hands in my hair other than my own, and I tried not to over think it. I wasn't much of a touchy person, unless it was with my fists. Living out most of your existence in a cursed cell in a water temple no one visited did that to you.

But I did remember when I had finally reached out to someone. I remembered the feel of her hair through my fingers, soft as silk, and cool as dew until you reached the warmth of her body.

A familiar, raw aching space in my chest gave an awful throb and I closed my eyes against the pain, but felt nothing other than a sudden dark numbness in response to it. Maybe this was what depression was like. Dark. Unfeeling. Pointless.

I didn't even realize when Malon had finished until she was kneeling in front of me, waving a hand in front of my face.

"What's got you in deep?"

"Nothing." I said. My new haircut felt much smoother beneath my fingers and I reluctantly thanked her. It did feel better, at least.

"You look better, that's for sure. Almost handsome." She had straightened and looked at me now with her chin resting on the back of her hand. "But really, what are you thinking about? After the other day I think I deserve a little closure from you as well. It's only fair."

"Well, life isn't fair."

I almost wasn't even surprised when she yanked me back down to the stool with her man-like strength and gave me her that signature, bossy, slave-master glare.

"Din, stop being such a girl and just tell me. Were you raped too?" She smirked.

"Why do you always go to the extreme?" I looked to the barn's ceiling, as though it could fall down on us and change her mind, or at least distract her. "Can I get a day off if I tell you?"

"I was going to half your work today because of your hand anyways, aren't I so loving?"

"Oh so." But given that, I knew the stubbornness of this ginger, and tried to bury myself in the dark numbness to avoid feeling my loss of dignity when I spoke. "I've never really been touched before. Gently, that is, except by her. She's the only one I've...touched, without meaning to hurt. To just feel."

"You know how wrong that sounds, right?"

"I don't care." I bowed my head, remembering her hair, her smell, her lips on mine. I couldn't find the means in me to say anything more, not because I cared that much for my pride, but because the heavy numbness had turned to something heavy and cold that took my voicebox with it.

When I felt her nails lightly scratching the top of my scalp, I flinched back.

"What are you doing?"

"Touching you." she grinned as she crossed the space and put her fingers to my hair again. "She isn't the only one anymore, is she?"

I stared at her, tracing the freckles, the grey-blue eyes that watched her own hand, and the thin pink lips. I couldn't imagine a woman being any more opposite to Kara in everything except skin color, and maybe with dark brown eyes.

Without thinking, I reached out my injured hand to her arm, to press my fingertips against her freckled skin, but quickly rethought it and retracted it just as she brought back her hand and left to get a broom. I examined the clumps of pitch black hair around me until she got back and handed the broom to me.

"Mr. Injured can handle cleaning up his own hair, can't he?"

Annoyed, I snatched the broom from her and stood to sweep. She cooed something sarcastically about 'Shadow's grumpy scowl,' then went back to mucking out the stalls for the day.

I remembered how her touch had felt, though, for the rest of the day, if anything just because it helped the memory of Kara's touch be less meaningful and vibrant. She tried to give me a job that wouldn't aggravate my cut hand for the day, but seeing as it was my freaking hand we usually ended up swearing at each other, me for her stupidity and her for my 'assholery.' By lunch, however, we were back to friendly terms as well as our card games and lemonade beneath a tree.

"What kind of life have you lived to have never been touched like that?" she asked over her sandwich, trying to make me comfortable by sounding casual.

"Not a very long one." I put down my chosen cards for my turn and took a bite of my own sandwich. Farore damn, I loved the cheese here. I could've had a straight cheese sandwich for lunch and be happy, but the sliced ham and lettuce didn't hurt.

"How old are you?"

"Don't know. You going to move?"

She put down two sevens. "How can you not know? Did you grow up an orphan?"

"No. And yes." I fingered through some fives. "And if you know what's best for you, you'll stop there. Trust me, Malon, you don't want to know what...about my past. Just let it add to my handsome mystic."

I expected her to roll her eyes, to smile, or even to scowl. But she just looked at me, her face betraying nothing. It unnerved me and after putting down my cards I took a swig of my lemonade to avoid her gaze.

"You know the darkest part of my past," she said sometime later, so quietly I almost lost her words in the breeze. "Not knowing yours makes me feel too...open. Like you know to much."

"Look, I'm only trying to think of you when I keep this from you. It's nothing you need to know anyways, and something I'm trying to forget. And it's not like I'm going to black mail you with your secrets or anything."

"Yeah, because you don't have any other friends."

And just like that, she perked up, and we both dusted off the crumbs from our hands to get back to the rest of the day's much lighter work. It wasn't till we both had our hands calming a horse who had gotten a rather painful stone stuck in it's hooves that it hit me that she had just called herself my friend. I don't know why it should feel weird to me. I thought I had come to terms with that idea days ago, but then I realized I hadn't. Making friends, realizing friends, anything that really had to do with friends and all other mushy, gushy, sing-a-long-worthy crap like that just didn't come naturally to me. I was made to understand those things just so I could be the opposite of them.

My mind kept going at it long after dinner and into my loft, where I stripped from my sweat-crisped clothes and washed myself of the days dust and grime. Friend. Did Malon realize just what kind of creature she had decided to draw so close to her by calling me that? Her bruises had just faded away from our brawl, and even now I could feel her fingers on my scalp and her gentle smile.

She isn't the only one anymore, isn't she?

I watched the water I had hauled up the ladder to the privacy of my loft drip through the floorboards to the stalls below. A tiny river against the grains of wood and old, bent straw.

What happened when you told someone your secrets? Is that what made them a friend? Was the heart of a man in their secrets?

Malon had said she felt vulnerable because I knew her secret, I knew of her darkness. Even as I sat watching the dirty water drip down my leg I thought I could just grasp what she meant in the form of the sense of responsibility and in the passion in which I had responded to the knowledge. Maybe that's why I had felt such a refined, yet raw rage in her defense, because I had been given her heart then. Maybe that's why she felt vulnerable to me, because I had her heart in my hands, and therefore the ability to hurt her in simple negligence.

Washed clean, and brushing a hand through my wonderfully short hair, I decided that I thought to much. It didn't change what I wanted to do, knowing why I wanted to do it. If anything, it just made my want into an undying urge that told me I wouldn't be getting any sleep tonight.

Thus, I pulled out my old black clothing and mail, took up my dark silver sword and boot knife, and slid down the ladder to find myself a horse.

Because apparently Malon's dear father, out of pity, was the one who hooked old Indigo up with a place to stay. Poor fool saw as much of my dark soul as he did of his ex-employee.