Author's Note: I have had a revelation. I can write whatever I want! You're probably confused as to why it took me so long to figure that out, but if you had the artsy fartsy English classes I had to take, you'd understand. Of course, concerning these stories I am telling to you, this is the true me writing, not the artsy fartsy me writing.

Oh, and I wish to hear back from you on one thing: Midna or Luna? :3 though, by chapter 12, you may have changed your mind.

Thank you for all your wonderful reviews! Please, let me know what you think. As always, these are all extreme rough drafts, so please excuse little typos...though I may mess with you with saying surly instead of surely...just for old times sake.

Chapter 11: Saved by a Fallen Star

It didn't take long at all for him to change his mind about this being a courageous idea.

Ten stupid points for me, he thought, Ten billion stupid points for me.

He was so dead. For at that very moment his hands had cramped up, refusing to move, and his fingers, coated with a nice skin of sweat, were slipping as each thought passed through his mind. He had reached the other end of the ledge, all right.

There was nothing but another slate wall.

Maybe, if he had been smarter he would have thought to bring his hook shot along and hooked around the weird, flat battlements of the next roof. Heck, if he had been smarter he wouldn't be out here at all. Stupid points, remember? Ten billion of them.

"Ah, Din," he breathed, beads of sweat tickling his face. "Farore, Nayru, whoever's up there, aw gods, I'm so sorry for being stupid. I try to be heroic, and this is-"

He never finished that sentence. The last centimeter of his fingertips had just run out.

All his organs rushed up to his throat, as though frantic to grab onto the ledge and not fall with the rest of him. His mouth opened for a scream, his thoughts went into a white blaze—

And then a hand like a spider, black and slender, caught him on one of his arms. For what felt like forever he hung there, fighting to remember how to breathe, staring down at the bottom of the long fall where a mental image of him lay splattered like a fallen peach. Guts spilled, brains exploded, bones broken, and very, very dead.

The black hand tugged him past the ledge and onto the tower roof. The moment his feet touched the roof tiles, before he even had a good look at his savior, he let out a long stream of curses. Profanities up and down the alphabet, sprinkled with words not even he had ever dared to utter previously.

His dark savior said not a word, watching through its large, flat, metal mask. Link only stopped when he heard it rattle. Tendrils of thick, tentacle like hair wavered about it in the barest of breezes. It crouched before him on all fours, larger than him, but not as tall as the monster Twili that had stolen Luna had been. For a long, terrifying minute, they stared each other. The hero wondered if he had just jumped from the frying pan and into the fire.

He gulped.

"Uh…thanks?"

The lanky Twili, all joints and limbs, cocked its mask to the side, but otherwise made no move to attack him. He took this as a good sign.

"Um…well…can I help you?" he said. He couldn't even be sure this creature could understand what he was saying. And why had it plucked him from his fall? Why hadn't it attacked him yet? He stood before it as defenseless as any man could be with only his pants on.

Maybe it was the supposedly missing guard set to watch over him. New sweat bubbled out all over him at this thought. But as the Twili continued to not make a move, he figured he might as well explain himself.

"I came out here to try and get Lu—that white winged girl out. She's not doing too well. It was a stupid idea to go out on the ledge, really…" he searched the cocked mask for some clue to the Twili's thoughts. "Do you think you could help me? She's hurt."

Listen to him. He sounded like a child. Besides, the Twili couldn't help him. It was corrupted, cursed to lose its will to some greater puppeteer; thoughtless and stupid.

And then the Twili turned, moved its hand over its shoulder in an unmistakable gesture to follow, and leapt off the top off the tower onto the roof just below.

Link's jaw fell open. He didn't waste time in wonder, but quickly gave chase, for the Twili's limbs were far longer than his own. The roofs of the palace were blessedly flat.

"Who are you?" he asked, "Can you really understand me?"

The Twili just continued on to the far side of the roof, where it grasped onto the battlements with its spidery hands and waited for him to catch up. Link did a quick job of scrambling after it, but no sooner was he within reach of the monster than it fell back into motion across the battlements and down to another roof. He chased after it, both confused and hopeful. Across the great palace and into the unknown they ran, one a camouflage of black, the other one a pale beckon against the dark clouds of twilight.

At last, panting and muscles burning, Link scrambled up another roof to find, not a Twili, but an open window, with satin-like curtains fluttering out of it. He glanced around for his guide before scrambling up into this as well and dropping down into the darkness.

The fall lasted just long enough to make him panic, but he hit the floor and rolled forward unharmed. Something akin to grass and dust stuck to his sweaty skin, making him itch. At first all he could see was darkness. Then a bit of faint, ocher light from outside broke through, and what he saw brought both bile and a scream to his throat.

Corrupt Twili—all masked, big, rattling like a rock slide, lined with red, and with their clawed hands scraping against the floor towards him.

He scrambled to his feet and looked up, but the window was far too high to jump.

Following a monster. Wow, those stupid points just keep coming.

The Twili crowded about him as he trembled on his feet. Their fingers reached forward, wide plate masks chinking against one another.

"Ahhh—ahhhh…" he begun, trying to give a proper scream but his diaphragm kept sticking to the roof of his lungs. "Ahhh—ahhh!"

But then they stopped. For a horrible second the two parties stared at each other. Link, with his mouth open in a half-born scream, and the Twili with their upraised claws.

Then one touched him. Tapped him really, and chattered something in what could have been words. Link's eyes widened. The Twili twittered once more and tapped his shoulder. It was highly unusual. Twili claws were meant for tearing apart people, not tapping them.

As it became more apparent that the Twili had no intentions to hurt him—yet—Link closed his mouth.

"W-what was that?" he asked.

When the Twili twittered to him once more without him understanding, all the masked creatures looked at each other, as though to exchange expression, as much as you could do, that is, when your face was a metal disc. Slowly, they backed away, chattering to each other excitedly. Then, before his eyes, one Twili reached up to its mask and lifted it off to reveal a normal—well, normal for Twili—face. It blinked its round, doleful eyes at him and smacked its nonexistent lips. One by one the other Twili did the same, taking off their masks to show him their faces. As they did so, the red lights on their skin died down to the usual turquoise glow.

He didn't gape. Though he did plenty of staring. So…the Twili weren't corrupt? But…did that mean they were working for Midna all along? He wouldn't have been surprised, she was confusingly tricky like that (though why she would have bothered being tricky fooling him or anyone else made no sense either). But then wouldn't they have grabbed him by now and thrown him back into his 'cage'? Where was he anyways? Taking a quick glance around, all he saw was an empty tower room with only the one window way up high and filled with some sort of grayish hay. There were about seven Twili, and seeing it wasn't a very big room in the first place, needless to say it was very crowded.

"Uh…"

But before he could come with a more intelligent thing to say to all this, a voice broke out across the chit-chat of the Twili's strange language, low and morose.

"Are you the mortal, Link?"

"Who wants to know?" he retorted automatically.

Like a black sea, the Twili parted, allowing a silvery-blue man to step forward. He wore a long, grey shift down to his feet and his hair reached down to his knees, straight as falling rain. But what struck Link first were his eyes set under his heavy, brooding eyebrows: large, squarish, and with pure white irises. The pupil was an almost imperceptible navy dot in the middle.

And he was tall. Link didn't realize just how tall until the man was standing next to him with a foot or two to spare above him.

The white eyes pierced through him like the terror of his fall only minutes before.

"Are you Link?"

"Yes." he croaked.

The frightening eyes narrowed.

"You will return the moon spirit you took from my companions, mortal Link. You will return her and I will not kill you."

Round Twili faces fell silent and watched them avidly. Link did his best to keep his expression cool, though inside an alarm started ringing.

"What do you want with her?" he asked calmly.

"Her brother sent me to earth the moment she fell to fetch her. You have been defying me at every turn and I have run out of patience. I have only kept you alive this far so you could tell me where she is." The white eyes shone like ice. "I care not if you are the chosen hero of the gods."

A wave of relief washed over him. "You were sent by the sun spirit?" Sure, the guy was a jerk that wanted him as bacon, but it was just what he needed.

"Yes."

"That's great! You're just in time, she's down somewhere in these dungeons. If you can get me back to the staircase out of the Queen's bedroom, I can take you right there."

His instant compliance threw the tall man completely off, and he even took a step back in surprise. The Twili began to chatter to each other, only growing louder when Link smiled.

"I'm sorry for the inconvenience. If I had known you were only trying to help her, I wouldn't have attacked you. It's just I have a bad history with clawed Twili wearing masks to begin with, so I moved out of principle. Deepest apologies. I'm guessing you want to take her home, right? Back up into the sky?"

The man blinked a few times, but he did not return Link's smile. Instead, he folded his naked arms against the square sheet of his shift with a grim, straight lip grimace.

"I…yes. Or attempt to, at least."

"Hate to be rude, but what's with all these Twili? I mean, Midna is their queen, wouldn't this be…?"

"These are but kind folk who wished to help a suffering soul. They also wish to preserve the old ways and feel that there is something…amiss, of late, about their queen. They wear their battle masks to show they are separated and strong."

Link turned his grin to the Twili and bowed. They shut up and stared.

"Thank you—for saving my life that is."

One of the Twili blinked. He guessed it was the one who had led him here, though he couldn't quite tell the difference between them all.

"Are you sure you can lead us to where her exact location is?" said the man. "These walls can change and shift according to the queen's will. There is a reason none of us could find her."

Link opened his mouth, paused, then wilted.

"Well, when you put it that way—wait, why did you ask me to give her back to you then? Why didn't you just ask Midna?"

He gave Link a dead-panned look, and for a moment he wondered if he should feel stupid.

"Seeing that we directly oppose all the queen's wishes, we can't very well ask her to lead us to her high security prisoner, and, well, you are in the best position to ask if there was anyone, seeing you are her lover—"

The temperature in the room skyrocketed, but he did his best to keep his face calm. He was a man, wasn't he? Men don't blush like school girls whenever someone says anything related to love. He was allowed to have lovers and, well, he did have feelings for her, though now she was an evil sorceress trying to take over the world and…yeah…

"Not entirely," he said, "it's complicated. But I see your point. I could probably talk to her. I don't know what good it will do, lying to her has never really worked for me."

"Then don't lie to her." said the man unblinkingly. "Have her lead you to the moon again, and we shall follow."

Link couldn't help but frown. "And…how are you going to do that? No offense, but you stand out here about as much as I do."

"Do not worry. Do your part to lead, and I will follow."

"If you say so. Oh, what—I mean, who are you anyways?"

"My name is Jasmeen." a bitter smirk broke across his face. "And I am a fallen star."

! #$#^&%&*(&(^%$# !#&^%$# !#$%^&*

One of the larger Twili escorted him (that means carried him in a very un-masculine fashion), back to Midna's room, where he made himself at home to wait. He wasn't entirely sure how the star would be able to know when Midna came let alone where he'd be in the castle without being next to him, but he had guessed it had something to do with those strange, white eyes of his.

He didn't have long to wait. Before he knew it, the emerald lines traced out the door and Midna stepped through, cape billowing, and bright orange eyes bright.

"So," she said. "Have you had enough time to think?"

Link looked to the side, trying to ignore the sudden squirming in his gut. He suddenly remembered how she had pushed him down and kissed him on her bed.

"Yes."

"Ah, I presume you see reason then?"

He paused. How was he suppose to not lie to her? It wasn't that he entirely sucked a lying. Midna just read him like a book.

"There's still one last thing I'd like to do before I…before I agree to work with you." he said carefully, and as precaution he added, quite truthfully, "Because you are right. I…I have often dreamt of the same thing. Of the worlds combined. Of being with you."

Din, it made him feel weird to say that.

Midna was smiling, pleased.

"What is it?"

"I'd…I'd like to see Luna. Just one last time. I want to know why she thought coming down to me would change the way I feel."

Again, another mix of truth. At the same time, a small part of him twanged at the last statement to wonder if Luna had already changed the way he felt. He was, after all, going out of his way to save her. If she hadn't been there, and it had just been him and Midna…but even that made him feel strange and uncomfortable. To distract himself from this, he took to watching Midna's expression. She seemed a bit less happy at this.

"Why do you care?"

"Because I feel responsible, okay? I'm not a ass, and she did come down for me. I need to see if there's any way I can convince her to give in so she can live and move on with her life. Maybe go back up to her brother, where she can be happy."

Midna did not mention the obvious fact that if the border between worlds was dispelled, the guardians would be dispelled as well. He didn't either. She did shrug, however, giving in surprisingly easy.

"Fine. But I must warn you, she isn't a pretty sight. I think she tried to fight out with her wings because there's feathers everywhere—sticking all over her too, ugh, like a freshly killed chicken. It's quite disgusting."

He cringed, but she had already turned around and did not see this.

"Come on."

Link hesitated. That had been far too easy. He got to his feet, however, and followed.

All along the way he was on edge, waiting for Midna to turn around and catch him in the act, or to at least question him more. She went on oddly silent, though, occasionally glancing over her shoulder to smile at him. Passing through a familiar great hall, this time devoid of other Twili, she fell alongside him.

"Have I ever told you my greatest regret?" she said softly, almost conspiratorially.

He raised an eyebrow. "Not keeping a better eye on Zant?"

"No, but close." and he felt her cold, firm hand weaving into his own. "Breaking the mirror of twilight. All I can remember is feeling horribly guilty for all the trouble I caused you and Zelda and wanting to keep you all safe. Now, I really don't know what I was thinking. If I had kept it open it would've made this whole transition easier." she drew up close, lowering her lashes bashfully, though Link knew better. Midna could barely be coy. Ashamed, yes, but not bashful. "Did you miss me?"

Again, the weird squirmy feeling, as though he had swallowed worms. Yes, but…well yes, of course. Of course.

Shivering, he drew a bit closer to her as well.

"Yes." he whispered.

She let out a content sigh. "I had hoped so."

"How could you have not?"

"There's always doubts. Doesn't matter how beautiful you are or how secure you are in the answer. Even when it is known it is good to always be reminded."

"Well," he leaned in to draw closer to her, though his shivering shook him to the core, making it all feel somehow wrong. "I'm reminding you. Though I think it is silly that you ever doubted how I valued you."

"I was hoping more than value, though. Something more than the imp screaming orders at you." And suddenly the fake-coy lashes lifted and he was caught in the orange gaze. Her lips had drawn close and he could smell her breath, exotic and musky. "Is there more?"

"Yes." he said, intoxicated by the smell.

"Say that you love me, Link."

"…I love you."

"Then forget about your Luna. Forget about the moon and let her wane."

He had just moved in to kiss her, but stopped at this. Luna. Luna, white, innocent, looking up at him with forgiving eyes, hands outspread to give him his lost, green hat. Luna, weeping in a spring with her hands clutched tightly to her chest. Luna, her wings outspread, tottering outside his window with her face pleading to be let in, so sorry…so very sorry. Luna, the name he had given her.

With just a tingle to show where their lips had brushed, he pulled back and looked at her. She looked back, expression holding more than he ever wanted to know, and so much of what he always wanted to know. Somewhere, above him, a star watched with piercing white eyes. But far deeper than that was a jagged sorrow being birthed in his chest.

"Why did you stop?"

Link said nothing. What was there to say? He didn't even know what to say to himself.

And in a flash her face twisted. She stepped away, muscles snapped tight. The almond orange eyes scorched him more than the sun ever could, but he couldn't move to make it right.

Because, somehow, it wasn't.

"Bastard," she hissed, "Traitor. Two-timer. If you want to see your pathetic moon so badly, fine! Fine! Here she is!"

And suddenly his surroundings were ripped in twain. Slate shifted, ceiling shrunk, and the floor fell away, though he did not fall. The silver bars reappeared again, and behind them hung the ragged Luna, surrounded by feathers. They even stuck to her front where the blood had dribbled down and on her arms where blood had trickled as she tugged on the chains and cut her wrists. She did not look up at him.

But Midna was shrinking from him, hands clasped about her arms. Though the sight of Luna's mangled form knocked the breath from him, he reached out to her, fighting for the words to speak.

"Midna, please, it's not like that—"

"Then why can't you just forget about her? If you love me, why didn't you jump at the chance to be with me? Why side with her!?"

"Because look at her! You know me! When have I ever left someone in need to bleed and hang? When have you ever? Din damn, don't you see what you've become?"

"But I'm in need!" she cried. "Don't you care about that? Don't you know what it's like to be so outcast—so alone?"

"Yes. Yes, I do. But that still doesn't make this right—"

She gave an angry cry. "Goddesses! Why do you have to be such a hero! Just talk to your stupid whore already, I—I'm still me. I haven't killed anyone." she took a deep breath and turned, still hugging herself. "I'll give you three minutes." she said bitterly. "Get your love talk over with."

"Midna—"

But she had already vanished into a dark portal. He let his hand drop to his side. He couldn't help but think that she had blown it all way out of proportion and gotten it all wrong, but a piece of him, the same piece that confused him and made him tremble, said he knew better, and whispered of something else.

Dark forms trickled down from the staircase. Carried with them came Jasmeen, face grim. Link noticed with some spite that the Twili managed to carry him in a dignified manner with all manliness preserved, unlike with him. He wondered why they didn't just form out of a portal like Midna.

The star strode past him to the bars. "Not gifted with much sense concerning the ladies, are you?"

"Oh, shut up." he snapped. "Just hurry and get her out. She could be back any moment."

He thought he heard one of the Twili make a noise incredibly like a snicker, but when he turned around he found them all busy at work stroking the walls to melt down the bars and the chains. Jasmeen stood at the ready to catch Luna when she flopped down lifelessly. He gently gathered her up into his arms, wings and all. It was then that Link noticed the abnormal long hump to his back. He had always stood in front of Jasmeen, never behind.

"Grab hold of a Twili," he said, "they can get us out of here. It was just getting into the room that was the problem, since the queen had it secured. But hold your breath. Don't want to breathe out your lungs into a portal. Unless you're feeling a bit overwhelmed by your woman's spite of you."

Link barely restrained himself from sending a right hook into his face.