"So let me get this straight: you can control these statue things with that wand?"

"It's not a wand," she insisted, pointing at the heavy blue staff in Link's hands; "it's a rod. The Dominion Rod. It's not whatever fairy fantasy princess wand you have in mind."

Zelda giggled, but I rolled my eyes and turned away to watch delightedly as Link frivolously smashed through a marble divider with the foyer statue's buddy. He'd picked it up again moments ago, Midna having explained that he'd had to leave the thing while she disappeared to fetch me – something about not wanting him to traverse the temple alone. Link had obviously disagreed with her attitude, as she threw a fit when she realized the statue had mysteriously advanced several rooms in her absence. It was like watching two lovers quarrel, if one were a mime.

For the most part, I liked the Temple of Time. It consisted of several floors of maze-like rooms full of low marble barriers, staircases, and the occasional store of weapons and artefacts or secluded altar. Unlike the mansion at Snowpeak, this place was eerily untouched, so frozen in time that not even the dust in the air settled on the slick banisters or bright, smooth moldings that traced the outlines of the interior. It almost felt haunted on account of the utter emptiness – like all the people inside had suddenly vanished but were bound to return any moment, or like the priests and priestesses and aides and worshippers were waiting elsewhere. And then there was the part I hated, that constant creeping sensation reinforced by the abundance of spiders scuttling around in literal flocks from darkened corner to corner, accompanied by that terrible scratching of hairy legs on the flawless tile.

The overall impression of the place only improved upon the realization that Link had completed most of it and we were that much closer to getting the truth out of Midna. From what I could tell, we were on the upper floors of the temple, attempting to return the statue to the foyer on some lower level in order to activate some sort of switch or something, since those sorts of things always involved switches. Want to lock a door downstairs? Install a switch and hide a massive, awkwardly-shaped statue with a moveable hammer several floors up. Sure, it was a clever idea, if you were the semi-intoxicated person who needed to hide something important in a pinch. It absolutely sucked as the finder though – except, I wasn't the finder in this scenario, so I reserved the right to do the one thing I did best, distracting others with my mouth. It just took more energy than I anticipated to form the words and let them out.

Even now, I was trying to come up with something witty to say, and I might have succeeded if it weren't for that goddesses-damned statue. It thunked along the marble in time to Link's footsteps, the rhythm periodically broken by the harsh smashing of the hammer against something delightfully smashable. Like my toes. I'd drawn my sword to gesture at a nearby gatepost, when the hammer suddenly came crashing down, a mere hairsbreadth from my boots. Mouth frozen in some mindless rant, I stared in shock as he peered around the other side of the statue, grinned once with that hard, steely expression that reminded me uncomfortably of a predator, then jerked his head at a collection of metal pots with holes in them sitting quietly beside us on the scale.

Aside from the bronze bell in the center of the room on the lower level, a pair of gold scales decorated most of the area, bridging the gap between the staircase that wrapped around from the main floor to an obscured loft and the door we just entered through. We somehow had to pile enough weight on the free scale in order to level it out and move the statue across and on our merry way. Link's solution involved some pots that bore a striking resemblance to Midna's head.

"Can't you throw that green thing-" He shook his head, then waved in some ridiculous fashion that Midna translated to: "Go move them onto the other one. We have to balance the weight."

"Got a way with words, that one has."

"Stop acting like that," she admonished. "You're acting like a child."

Maybe. But I wasn't exactly sure how I should act in a situation like this, where I was the intruder. I'd finally helped Midna achieve her goal but never at any point in our quest did I ask what would happen now, in the aftermath when she recovered her man. She'd told me vaguely that I would be free, but now I had been inducted into the group, almost… by some unspoken obligation. Like I had seen too much to be let go – we had experienced just enough together that I had joined their little movement. I felt connected, even to Link, who I'd only really met just a few hours ago. But lurking around the fuzzy edges of our strange little expedition, I couldn't help but sense that I'd come into their reunion about halfway through the completion of this puzzle, the odd interloper in their adventure. I also struggled to stomach potentially being responsible for their discovery and deaths at the hands of Ganondorf. I didn't want that responsibility.

I should go. The answer was obvious. I knew Link was trying to adjust to my presence, but in the end, it came down to the ultimate decision that if Ganondorf wanted to find me, then let him find me, alone. Besides, instead of having a real hand in the action, a sensation that I had hopelessly become addicted to, I was left to stand on the sidelines and watch, or help marginally, as Link dispatched enemies with such ease the guilt left me awestruck. They didn't need me. She didn't need me anymore. Maybe they never did. I was just someone in the way and I couldn't bear that, childishness be damned.

'You are wrong.'

I snorted, garnering a sideways look from Link, but as usual, he made no comment. As I moved the stupid-looking pots, he bounded across the scales to the staircase side and began knocking more off a higher shelf with his magic wand. I followed suit, although I ended up tossing the pots onto the closer scale as he brought them down onto the tile floor. It struck me as odd that the tile didn't crack upon contact, or even scratch. Not that I cared, in particular, since this was most likely another magical temple with another magical monster hidden deep within its mysterious depths – a monster that I thankfully would not get the chance to play with, since Link had reclaimed his position as king of the playground. Trying in vain to hide my disgruntled frown, I stood alongside the pots to even out the sides, allowing Link to guide Buddy the ugly statue across the gap and onto my scale. As soon as he thunked onto the bed, nearly knocking me over with the force of impact – how the hell could this thing support a statue that heavy in the first place? – Link joined me on the scale and started tossing the pots onto the next ledge, the floor, the other scale, anywhere but where we stood.

Midna muttered something. He glanced at her sharply, a strange look on his face, but he shook his head in reply. I didn't care for charades and sign language. I jumped over the side of the scale to further disperse the weight and landed with a disgusting squish on a pack of nasty little spiders scuttling around on the lower level. After a few minutes' worth of flailing my sword around and trying to look skilled, or even professional, I ended up leaning against a nearby wall while Link activated the strange bell transport device by moving the statue onto the carved bed.

"What would happen if I stood in there too?" He hesitated, about to deposit Buddy onto the pad, shrugging. "Can I try it?"

"Yeah, that's right, let's test some crackpot Oocca invention," snapped Midna. She gestured for him to proceed. "I just rescued you – I don't feel like scraping your sorry ass off the walls this time."

"Actually," I responded disdainfully, "I'd rather you not touch my sorry ass. That's like sexual harassment." If looks could kill, I thought dryly. She turned her nose away, into the air, then froze as she realized Link had vanished. Unimpressed, I pointed to the little gazebo that housed the bell, on top of which Link sat, smirking and waving annoyingly. "Yes, yes, we can see you. What's up there?" That, predictably, got me nowhere, since he only waved his hands and made some sort of gesture with his arms. I stormed up the steps again and onto the side of the scale, only to stare at a clawshot target and a previously unnoticed geometric pattern carved into the wall that curved from the top of the gazebo, around part of the room's perimeter, to the upper loft. The grooves looked like they would work nicely as a spinner track.. My hand darted to my belt before I could think.

"Idiot," Midna hissed. "It's his, not yours. I even told you that you were only borrowing!"

"Yeah, well, I forgot." 'Your attitude is suffering,' quipped Zelda smartly.

It's a character flaw

Link had this look about him that spoke louder than anything he could've said. His efforts of inclusion did not in any way extend to his equipment, and I could respect that boundary… in theory. He looked downright betrayed, confused, and I felt bad for him, felt like I needed to clarify what had happened. But the firm NO conveyed by her eye stopped me in my tracks. Noticing this exchange, he stared accusingly again at Midna, who merely shrugged and whispered, "Later. I promise," to which he simply scoffed. Next second, he'd thrown the clawshot at my head with way more force than necessary. Someone was angry.

I snatched it out of the air, buckling awkwardly as I balanced on the edge of the scale, before swiftly joining him on the gazebo. He took back the weapon almost instantly: here I was, some strange shadow mishap (as she had so kindly demoted me) admitting that I had hijacked his hard-won tools. If I were him I'd be more than a little curious – what else had this character hijacked? I'd been similarly upset over the repossession of the bow, so I could kind of relate. When he bent down to inspect the spinner track, I felt that same awkward spark of jealousy or whatever it was and held out my hand to Midna.

"You can't say the spinner's his," I snapped at her indignantly. "I got it from that stupid skeleton thing in the desert."

She bared her teeth at me but produced the spinner anyway. Link stared at it curiously. Suspiciously. Much to Midna's surprise, I showed him how to set the teeth into the track and gun it. "There are tracks like these in a few different places," I offered, extending the proverbial olive branch. He looked between me and the spinner questioningly, but ultimately shrugged it off. He was futzing with the mechanism when I said suddenly, "Wait. Hold it right there for a second." Then I reached for the spinner, diverting at the last second to the skewed shadow it cast; when I moved, a shadowy replica came away in my hands. Midna snorted.

"Show off."

I grinned, hefting the new weapon. "I didn't think it'd work." Link had his eyes narrowed, his hands checking over the original for any strange defects. I wanted to tell him this was a truce, not the hare-brained offence he might perceive. We could both do this, with a bit of compromise. "You think this copy is just temporary?"

Shrugging a shoulder, Midna pointed to the spinner's conspicuously absent shadow. "I think you're putting a little too much stock into your apparent magic. Your weapons, your clothes – they were in direct contact with you during the changes inflicted by pure twilight. You're essentially just borrowing. But you're doing a bang-up job of securing your title as Dark Link," she added snidely.

I brushed off the comment and tested the shadow in the track, and upon finding that it functioned properly, rode it around to what turned out to be a mostly empty storage area, including a resident poe that I dispatched without much trouble. As soon as the shadow spinner left my possession, it dissolved into the tiles to rejoin Link's upon its arrival. Little Miss Sunshine laughed derisively at the disappointment evident in my expression.

How's that for a suffering attitude?

I felt the warmth of a smile. 'Clever.'

Midna huffed. Link went ahead and kicked open an ornate chest in the corner, but glowered bitterly at the rupee and within seconds crossed instead to what looked like a broom closet set into the far wall beneath a tiny window. A fallen crest and part of a scorched tapestry littered the nearby tiles, agonizingly close to a row of intact ceramic pots that called to me. Why he didn't pocket the damn money was beyond me, but who was I to argue? He could decapitate me in probably two seconds flat, counting the time it took to unsheathe his sword and pull what she'd called a Helm Splitter. The guy had skills I could never hope to contend with. He almost made me nervous, just standing-

"Oh holy hell, what the-" I swung wildly at the squealing mass of flesh as it charged, its helmet slightly rusted but still considerably dangerous and aimed right at me. Hurriedly sidestepping away from the edge, the helmasaur managed to knock me into the floor, and in response, I frantically took hold of the closest thing – one of those metal Midna pots – and brought it crashing down over the helmeted head. The little body dropped like a rock. Link grunted somewhere off to my left, from within what was decidedly not a broom closet, or at the very least a very roomy closet. "Shit. Shit! Freaking shit." Storming the entrance with the stupid little helmet in hand, I tossed it at his head. "Thanks for the warning, man! That thing almost knocked me clear off the landing!"

The grin that lit his face almost seemed sheepish. Almost. He narrowed his eyes the slightest bit and what looked like a fang peeked out of the side of his mouth. Within another moment, he'd shot his way up a level, to another loft, and leaned over the edge to stare expectantly, pointing at a small collection of helmasaur plates that littered the floor. Trust this deserted temple to have a helmasaur petting zoo. Din.

"What do you want them for, eh?" And I hated the fact that I sounded more than a little disgusted, maybe even a little scared. They are dead. Calm down. He just shook his head and pointed again at the pieces. "Fine. Get ready." I picked up the one closest to me, and chucked it as hard as I could at that mocking expression he wore, but instead of seeing the metal careen into his face with a satisfying smack, he caught it with one hand and disappeared for a moment. Metallic clamoring echoed in the tiny room, and upon his reappearance a moment later, I threw the next one up to him; he had to be rearranging things up there. How or why, I had no idea and probably didn't want to know. He caught this one too, set it down on something I couldn't see, and within seconds had opened an elaborate bronze gate that revealed another little alcove. I started for the enormous black chest when Link landed behind me with a solid thump of leather boots on dusty stone, and accordingly I stopped. But when he didn't react to my opening of the chest, I triumphantly held up the massive key.

"Finally." Midna snatched it from me and floated towards the door. "Let's go."

I grinned. Link had cocked his head, mimicking her with exaggerated facial expressions and lip-synched words. Spinning around in apparent offense at the delighted silence, she scowled dangerously at him, but he only smirked at her with that awful predatory smile of his. I'd never felt more like a third wheel in my life – and a tiny third wheel at that, one that wasn't even necessary and possibly didn't even touch the ground. Maybe I was the busted spare, since I'd already served my purpose. And then Zelda actually growled.

'Listen to yourself,' she complained. 'This is absurd. You are still a valuable member of this group and will always remain as such.'

Thanks for the reassurance, princess, I bit right back, almost walking into the wall on my way back out of the broom closet room. But if you don't mind, I'd like to sulk in peace. I'll be leaving once I get the whole story.

'I am fully capable of explaining the details of the situation. Presently.'

Don't taunt me. It's not ladylike.

That little light of hers pulsated with what could have been wicked joy, eliciting a deep snarl from me. Midna immediately turned around to hiss, "Come on," from the doorway, and I followed the pair down the stairs, out of the scale room, and into the familiar maze-room with the spinners and fire-eyed statues. I hated this room. Not only did it remind me of a basement full of target-practice equipment, but it was here, on the trip to retrieve Buddy, that I'd realised that my bow was missing. I'd turned to inquire about it when I saw Link take it out, in its original state, aim at a diamond switch clear across the room and fire. With my bow. I'd reached for it, and upon brushing it with my fingers, a greyscale version had peeled off from the original, in all its surreal, twilight glory. This was about where I'd discovered the possibility of possessing shadow replicas of original weapons, which apparently included my beloved bow. Thus, Link wielded the bow in its original state, and I had the twilit version tucked into my quiver.

Now, Link turned to me with an expression akin to leering. I glared with obvious irritation, then shot the diamond on the opposite side of the room with more force than necessary. The switches controlled huge rolling marble barriers that partitioned the room like mobile blockades, coincidentally creating a maze as one alternately shot each of the diamonds to move the marble. He picked up Buddy from the bell beside the far diamond, smashed through the last barrier, and then placed the statue on another pressure switch that operated the electric current that blocked the next staircase. It occurred to me then, as he reanimated the one-eyed, hammer-wielding statue, that we must have looked absolutely ridiculous: me, a liberated shadow, leading a huge hopping statue and a green-clad kid in a floppy hat. Link guided it down the flight of stairs, clunk-clunking behind me at such a rapid tempo that I was terrified it might flip forward and suddenly crash into me, sending us both flying down the stairs and most likely leaving me squished. I wondered vaguely if my transient form could sustain injuries like that. I turned to ask Midna, but she had her arms crossed in his shadow and a troubled look set into her eye.

By the time we got the statue into the turnstile elevator and back to the first floor of the entire temple, just a door away from the foyer, the anticipation flooding my veins was making my hair stand on end. We were so close to the end of this place, and from there, I would be free. Midna would tell her little story and I could go back to Ren at some point. In actuality, I had the grand scheme all planned out so that I would draw Ganondorf's attention while Link and Midna finished whatever they had left of their quest, and then return to Ordon once they finally freed Hyrule. I didn't have the details yet so I could only formulate a rough sketch, but there it was, in all its optimistic glory. Zelda disagreed wholeheartedly with every aspect.

'That isn't the answer. Your assistance is completely necessary, even if you refuse to admit it now.'

In that instant I wanted to turn to her, wanted to face a physical presence and explain properly why it absolutely was the answer. But that wasn't an option, because Zelda was only a faint glow in my mind, and I would probably never get to know her real form. What the hell was with princesses and false forms? Talk about false advertising. If the country could see her now, as a part of Midna, Hyrule might just accept Ganondorf as a legitimate monarch. Great Din, but light and telepathy and whatever was no way to hold a serious conversation. Faltering slightly, I shut my eyes tight.

Yeah, we'll see how much you need my help when I really screw things up.