Chapter 11

Daphnes Harkinian's funeral was only for his closest friends, and of course, family. Zelda had stood with her arms around Midna the entire time, occasionally choking back a sob and wiping away a tear that slid down her cheek. Link stood just behind her, doing his best not let his bottom lip tremble. Sheik and Dark stood beside him, both in stoic silence and Tetra was just off to the side, her hands clenched tightly behind her back.

Shayla stood beside her father, Jalum's arm around her shoulder. Shayla's father gripped his wife's hand tightly. They had been the best of friends, he and Daphnes. They had graduated school together, gone to college together, heck, for a while, they had even worked in the same department of a workplace! Daphnes was the man who'd always come to him at one in the morning, complaining that his daughter's had gone off to camp or were staying at a friend's house and that he was in desperate need of a good coffee and some pizza. Memories, be happy or not, hurt.

When the priest had finished his bit, the body of Daphnes Harkinian, cleaned and dressed up for the 'occasion' was hoisted onto the shoulders of four youths and carried away, being taken away to be cremated.

"No!" Zelda gasped. She let go of her younger sister and started after her father's body. "No, please, don't leave me...! Don't, please... Dad!" Link went after her, gripping her shoulders and trying to hold her back. She thrashed in his arms, never once ceasing her pitiful screaming or her insistence of going forward. In a moment of hesitation, she broke away from him and ran to her father, put her hand on his cheek and sobbing. "No, no! Please, Dad, you can't... you can't leave us! Please..."

Dark, Sheik, Tetra and Link all rushed forward to bring their friend back. She struggled against them for a moment as the four boys carrying her father's body continued forward. Then, finally surrendering, she turned around and cried into Link's chest. He held her there tightly.

(xxx)

That night, Link promptly decided that if he had to endure any more sadness, grief, confusion or anything even relatively close to any of those emotions, he would explode. The Goddesses must have heard him, he was sure, when Vaati and Kafei turned up at his door, smiling brightly and insisting that he come to the party tonight.

He agreed, and, against his prior will, got ridiculously drunk.

Even as he opened his mouth, another can of beer was passed through the throng of the crowd and thrust into his hand. He took it willingly, cheering loudly as he lounged against a wooden chair and watched his friend get intimate enough with a girl that it would've been entirely inappropriate had they all been sober.

"Mmm... that last one was nice," Vaati noted as he reclaimed his spot between Link and Kafei. He wiped his lips just as he raised his beer to his mouth.

"She was," Kafei agreed, eyeing the girl that Vaati had just kissed as she giggled with her friends.

"I bet you that mine was better," Link said, pointing to the girl that he had made out with before.

"What was she, like your fifth?"

"Fourth," Link corrected. He was very glad he wasn't thinking straight at the moment, or he may just have killed himself with guilt. "I think I'll go get another drink," he excused, standing up unsteadily and tottering his way outside. As much as he enjoyed a good game of spin the bottle with girls that he had never laid eyes on before, getting completely smashed was just that little much better.

As he picked up another bottle, two arms slinked around his waist.

"Crack open another, will you?"

"Hey, Ruto," Link smirked, turning around so she was now wrapped around his front. "Haven't seen you for a while. Where you been?"

"Oh, you know," she dismissed. "Around." She was wearing a tight blue dress that left very little of her anatomy to the imagination. The hem was pulled a little higher as she pressed herself into Link. The blue streaks through her hair shone under the moon, matching the colour of her dress and accentuating the sparkle in her eyes a little. "So...?" Her hands flitted down to his stomach and lingered there a little, and he felt a little hot in his gut. "How've you been?"

"Ah, nothing's changed much." Though, if he had stopped to think it through with his drunk, muddled mind, maybe he would've been able to recognise just how much they had. But, just as he started to consider to consider how much things had changed, she reached up and pressed her lips against his, immediately intruding into his mouth. It wasn't long before he was willing to respond in kind.

He was jerked away from her roughly by a clenched had around his shoulder. He spun around and was immediately punched in the face.

"...Whoa," he snorted, rubbing his jaw ruefully. "Good morning!" The only response he got was to be punched again, this time in the cheek. He blinked furiously as his bearings came back to him.

"Bastard," the big guy in front of him snarled. "Making out with my girlfriend." He threw another punch, which Link dodged by a hair. Link's movements were sluggish, but so were the other guy's.

The guy came barrelling towards him, and Link caught him and managed to get a kick in to his gut. The other guy coughed and, arms flailing, managed to clap one of Link's ears. So, ears ringing furiously, Link aimed at the guy's face, only to be met with a satisfying crunch. Mm hmm, his nose was broken. Blood flowing terribly down his face and off his chin, the guy shoved him backwards roughly. If it were anywhere else, Link would easily have been able to regain his balance quite easily, even if he were as drunk as he was at this moment. But, as it were, there was a pool behind him, which he fell into, quite ungracefully and with a yelp that, if he had cared, would've been quite embarrassing.

Spluttering, he came back up to the surface, wiping his now soaked hair out of his face. Apparently the swim had propelled him back into reality and he quickly realised that he was, quite simply, an idiot. Kissing other girls? He hadn't realised what a bastard he was. He loved Zelda. Zelda! He loved... Loved?

He paused a moment before hauling himself out of the pool. Loved?

The other guy's nose was still bleeding, and Ruto was fawning over him. As he climbed out of the pool, dripping and cold to the bone, she threw him a little wink before going back to making a fuss over her big, ugly boyfriend. Link checked his watch. Oh crud, it was past one in the morning. He had to get home. To friends that didn't get him drunk and allow him to kiss strangers. To his little sister. To Zelda, whom he...

He shook his head in an attempt to both dry his hair and clear his mind, and he decided.

Loved.

(xxx)

When he knocked on the door of his house, Link was still reasonably wet, his clothes were past the point of dishevelled, and he couldn't decide if his mood was closer to sheepish or irritated. He had lost his house keys goddesses-know-where and Vaati, the piss head, had scratched his Epona as he had backed out of the driveway.

Sheik opened the door, rubbing his eyes and his mouth already set into an angry line.

"Well, hello there. I have a sneaking feeling that someone was meant to be back over two hours ago," he greeted nastily.

"Yeah, yeah, I know."

"Where were you?" Tetra mumbled sleepily, walking down the corridor and yawning widely.

"At a party," Link answered vaguely. He tried to push through the door, but Sheik's arm blocked his way.

"Whose?" Sheik asked.

"I... don't know." And he didn't. Vaati and Kafei had just invited him out, and he had pretty much gone without so much as a 'hang on, let me put on some proper pants'. The other two picked up on this.

"Why are you wearing those?" Tetra questioned, distastefully eyeing his ripped, faded, covered-in-random-colours-of-paint, almost-in-shreds pants. He usually wore them when he was painting people's houses.

"Didn't get a chance to get changed," he mumbled. "Now, may I please enter my own house?"

"Sure. Just as long as you don't come any further the garage, where, did I mention, you'll be sleeping tonight," Sheik told him. "Your stuff's already in there."

"Aw, what? Sheik, stop being an idiot!"

"I'm not. You're drunk, I can see lipstick on your cheek, and Zelda doesn't wear lipstick. I apologise, but morons aren't allowed to sleep in civilized places."

"I... fine!" Link jerked open the door to the garage and went in. Just as Sheik had said, his sleeping bag, an extra blanket and a pillow lay in a pile on the floor.

"Night," Tetra called from inside the actual house, walking away back to her own makeshift bed. Link grunted in response, though he doubted that she would've heard him. Angrily, he rubbed the lipstick off of his cheek and cursed whichever girl there tonight that had worn water-proof make up.

He scrambled into his sleeping bag and closed his eyes, trying his best not to feel like a complete bastard.

(xxx)

"Anybody going to wake Link up?" Dark asked, biting into his toast.

"Nope."

"Nah."

"Huh. Well aren't you two great."

"Yep."

"Sure."

Right on cue, Link wandered blearily into the kitchen, pretty much dragging his feet along and looking utterly miserable. Sheik, Tetra and Dark could tell that the reason for all that misery wasn't completely because of the hangover he was inevitably stuck with. As he walked past Dark, he picked up his coffee mug and just about drained it.

"Hey!"

"Sorry dude, but my head's killing me." He dropped into a chair put his head into his arms on the table and groaned.

"... Is that a bruise?" Dark leaned across the table and poked Link's cheek. At the latter's shout of indignant pain, he nodded his head. "Yep. It's a bruise."

"'Lipstick' do that?" Sheik asked.

"Nope," Link replied sullenly. "Her boyfriend did."

"Huh."

"Saves me doing it," Tetra muttered. "I was going to wait to punch you until the hangover had disappeared so you would actually be able to feel the full pain of it, but I guess he did my job for me."

"Thanks Tet," Link said.

"No problem."

"Why'd you go anyway?" Dark asked.

"Vaati and Kafei turned up at the door, and I said 'sure, why the hell not?'"

There was a pause on the table for a minute. "Did you read the letter?" Even without asking, Link was pretty sure he knew which damned letter they were talking about. He nodded. "So you found out she was moving school, and that seemed like a good enough reason to go get blind-stinking-drunk?"

"Shut up, I know it was stupid," Link defended. "It's just, after the funeral..."

"Well, you could have at least gotten blindingly drunk with the rest of us. None of us were feeling all that flash either," Tetra told him.

"You're not old enough to drink."

"Neither are you," she reminded him. "And you could have at least joined us in drowning our sorrows in soda." Link snorted, though he supposed that would've been the much cleverer option.

"Did she tell any of you about moving schools or whatever?" he asked them glumly.

"Nope."

"Didn't have a clue."

"Uh... yeah, sorta." All heads turned to Sheik, who shrugged and looked away.

"Come on, Sheik! Spill!" Dark insisted.

"She asked me not to tell anyone," he replied, looking slightly uncomfortable.

"Yeah, well, we all know now anyway," Tetra reminded him.

"Come on, fill us in," Link said.

(xxx)

"So... what do we do?" Link asked, fiddling with the pencil in his hands. "Zelda has an interview in three days, and, if you ask me, she's in no state to go."

"Agreed," Dark said, while the other two nodded.

"Do we try and reschedule it or something?" Tetra suggested.

"No..." Sheik mused. "They'll have other interviews to do so I doubt they'll let us postpone it."

"So...?"

"I say we go."

"We? As in, we?" Link questioned.

"Yeah, the four of us. We'll go to the interview, explain to the principal what Zelda's circumstances are and, well, hope for the best I guess," Sheik told them. There was a long pause as the rest of them contemplated this idea.

"I'm in," Tetra decided. Sheik shot her a smile.

"Me too," Dark said.

"Couldn't stop me if you tried," Link added.

(xxx)

"Okay, why the hell is Zelda's score 98 percent, and mine is only 63?" Link asked, comparing his test to his own. He sat in the back seat of Sheik's mum's van, with Sheik driving and Dark riding shotgun – bastard had called it before they were even out of the house! – while he and Tetra sat in the back. "I swear, her mind has all but broken down, and she can still ace math tests."

"What'd she get wrong?" Tetra asked, leaning over and having a look.

"Uh..." Link flicked through the pages. "Forgot to label the axes in one place." Tetra snorted.

"And you, you dumb piece of crap," she poked Link roughly in arm, "how on earth did you get this wrong? Negative 24 plus negative 17 is equal to negative seven? Haven't you been paying any attention in class all year? When you put a negative and positive together, it ends up to being a negative."

"Shut up," Link growled. "I was... worried about Zelda!"

"Oh yes, of course, and while you were off worrying about Zelda, who was getting just about full marks on her test, you were pretty close to failing yours! You know, you'd better not let her see this. Along with this test and your drunken partying the other night, she will leave you sitting there in the dust on your ass, and I'm not going to intervene."

"... Are we almost there?" Link whined loudly, doing his best to change the subject from his abysmal grades in math.

"You're the one with the map, Link," Dark reminded him. "But, lucky for you, I know where we're going. And yes, we're almost there." Link sighed thankfully.

They were headed to Hylia High for Zelda's interview. After breaking into Zelda's house, though Tetra insisted that it wasn't because they had the key, and rummaging through some of her stuff, they had collected a small portfolio containing pictures, certificates, badges and anything else that could be important in order to showcase their friend.

The school grounds they entered were huge; at least five times the size of East Hyrule. None of them could find the will to close their gaping mouths as Sheik drove around the parking lot, trying to find a spot. Link and Dark were practically drooling at the sight of the expensive, not to mention fast, cars that were parked there.

When they got out of the car, Sheik decided to play Mother Hen.

"Tet, could you do up your top button?"

"But it goes right up my neck. I won't be able to breathe." They were still in school uniform because they had had to leave pretty much as soon as their school had finished in order to be in time for the interview.

"Here, put this on." Sheik had dragged up a black scarf from somewhere and he threw it to Tetra. "Dark, at least do up your shoelaces, man!" Dark did as told, muttering something nasty about his friend under his breath. "And Link, couldn't you have done anything about your hair? It's... scraggly and messy and terrible." Link's hair was tied as best as he could manage, with long blonde bangs hanging to the sides of his face. True, his hair wasn't as neat as Sheik's, whose seemed to be stupidly neat for perhaps the first and only time in his life. Sheik reached up to brush Link's hair back, but backed away with a roll of his eyes at Link's glare.

"Ready?" Sheik asked them all. Now it was the other three's turn to roll their eyes.

"Yes Mom," they replied caustically, before starting to walk towards the building in the direction which a sign pointed out was towards the Reception. At the desk, they informed the lady that they were here for Zelda Harkinian's appointment to see Vice Principal Parish.

"Umm, Zelda?" the lady asked, looking confusedly at them. She had known the girl, and her late father, last year and a few before that.

"With us in spirit," Dark assured her solemnly. The other three snickered and took a seat at the desk lady's indication.

Finally, after waiting for almost ten excruciating minutes, a tall figure came down the corridor and ushered them into his office. An apprehensive Link, Dark, Sheik and Tetra all sat on the edge of their offered seats, glancing between each other.

"Well, this is a curious situation," the Principal said, taking a seat across from them all. "I hear you are here in place of Miss Harkinian."

"Yes," Sheik started hesitantly. "She... couldn't make it today."

"Oh? Do explain."

"Well, you see sir, here's our situation," Tetra began.


A/N EDIT: re-uploaded 18/12/10

Author's Note:

Well, this was a quicker update than I, and I'm sure you, expected. I thoroughly hope that's a good thing!

Well I don't have much to say, except that I hope you liked the chapter.

I know, Link's a bit of a bastard. But people do stupid things... and also I really just needed a reason to laugh at him, and for Sheik to make him sleep in the garage. I've tried it, and trust me, not comfortable when the floor is uneven cement and there are possibly mice in there...

As you may have noticed, I've reverted to third person all of a sudden. Don't ask why, I just have. It's just easier sometimes, especially when one main character is depressed and the other is drunk.

So... R&R please!

Next update in a little over a week, most likely.

buddy w