"Life goes on." It was a mantra that people recite to themselves as they stare at the shards of a favorite plate, or the corpse of a close friend. It was something everyone knows.

It wasn't something that everyone believes.

And life was, ultimately, not something that existed outside the human mind; giving it a label, a definitive word of four letters, as if it were a solid object to be touched and held, was a mistake of language. If the mind asked life to wait for it, life would, in the world that was perceived and constructed within the mind. If the mind didn't move on, then neither would life. In the end, it all depended on "you."

In the jail cells below Rito Hall, life became the the cold stones of the floor and the hallway beyond the bars. In the chieftain's room above, life lay still in the ashes of burnt papers. In the hospital wing, life was blank and dark and numbed with what painkillers were in stock. Life was small and cramped, shoved away in dark corners to shudder to a stop.

For some, life stopped here. For others, it already had.

Link heard the noise behind the sound of Midna's lilting voice discarding his fourth escape plan. It wasn't loud at first, just a faint creaking noise that could have been a squeaky hinge, or a distant noise of Goddesses-knew-what from outside. But then it gathered volume and strength, until Midna's gesticulating hand halted in midair; and then even louder to its crescendo like a beast gaining speed, until Link clapped his hands over his ears; then louder still, stretching impossibly long and impossibly high.

And then it vanished.

There was a moment of silence. Carefully, Link cracked one eye open and studied the hallway beyond the bars through the corner of his eye, somehow unwilling to face it. It had been, he realized, the sound of metal being bent, but something in Link's gut told him that it wasn't just that—if Link had been a poet, he would have said it was the sound of one unmovable meeting another and finding, once and for all, which was unmovable and which was simply difficult. Or perhaps it was his paranoia. Same thing, really. Maybe poets were born from paranoia. Or guilt. What did he know?

"Well?"

Link looked up at Midna and raised an eyebrow, whatever uncertainty had been on his face wiped clean. "Well, what?"

"Aren't you going to check it out, wolf-boy?"

He shot her a reproachful look, almost to say "Of course," but when he failed to answer in words, Midna smirked at him. Because, to be honest, they both knew he didn't want to. Paranoia painted shadows in light, was the Hylian saying. The Twilian saying was that guilt painted light in shadows. As if guilt was a good thing.

He looked anyway. But it was because he wanted to prove her wrong, so even though he placed his forehead against the bars and peered down the hallway, he wasn't sure if he really registered what he saw, because he'd been so focused on Midna he couldn't recall. All he remembered a snap, and then the world going white.

Quill had done what he was supposed to. In his entire (albeit relatively short) career as a postman, he'd never missed a shift, or failed to deliver his letters on time. He'd done his part to solve the mystery of Valoo's rage. He'd heard Link out, doing what the police force should have done for him, and found the truth about Emit. He'd brought the fairy and the prince's possibly last hope to the Chieftain.

"I'm sorry," said the fairy. "I won't heal your son."

But sometimes, Quill found, even if you did everything right, things still turned out wrong.

"I-I know that's hard for you to hear, and it's not that I don't want to," added the fairy, but the damage was done. Quill merely looked down, jaw set in place, and replaced the cork in the bottle. If the fairy protested, they couldn't hear. All they could see was the fairy lying on the floor of the bottle, light pulsing like a discarded heart. Together, Quill and the Chieftain looked at the light within the bottle, the Chieftain sitting behind his desk with his fingers laced and Quill standing at his side, arms crossed.

"I'll take her to the police force," Quill offered, if only to break the silence. "They could get a straight answer out of her."

The Chieftain didn't offer a response, but watched the bottle as if waiting for something. When it didn't happen—whatever it was—the Chieftain looked up at Quill and said, "We shouldn't be rude, Quill. Take the cork out."

Quill tried not to hesitate, but it was as if he had to force himself to move and take the bottle, setting the cork on the table with care and stretching his fingers over the lid like the bars of a jail cell. After all, the chieftain didn't want to be rude, but of course he didn't want the fairy to escape. In Quill's opinion, there wasn't any middle ground between the two—either they were rude and kept the fairy in the bottle, or they were polite and set the fairy free. As the air hummed beneath Quill's palm, it was all too clear which side of the line they were on.

It wasn't the first time Quill wondered if he should just be done with it and join the police force—and possibly the Chieftain would leave him alone if he wasn't a conveniently useable third party.

"Miss Fairy," the Chieftain began.

"Navi," corrected the fairy. It was, perhaps, the only word she'd managed to say so far in a voice that didn't tremble faster than a taunt bowstring.

"Miss Navi," the Chieftain said. "Excuse me for prying, but I'm going to have to ask a few questions. Is that alright?"

"Y-Yes…"

"You have made two very curious claims within the last ten minutes. The first," and his fingers separated, sliding from each other to drum softly on the tabletop, "being that you are a different species of fairy."

"Yes…" she mumbled, then in a stronger, clearer voice, she repeated, "Yes, I am."

Neither acknowledging nor rejecting this statement, the Chieftain continued: "Your second claim is that because you are a different species, you cannot heal my son. Is this correct?"

"That… that's correct, yes."

"Then," replied the Chieftain, "do you have any proof to support these claims?"

One second ticked by, then two, and in the span of those moments, Quill could almost see the thoughts in the fairy's mind whirring faster and faster as her wings slowed.

"You don't believe me?"

The hands lifted from the desktop in an innocent gesture as the Chieftain shrugged. "How can we?"

"But…" An almost shrill, high note lifted the word into simultaneous desperation and whining. "But haven't you… heard of guardian fairies…?"

"I'm afraid not."

The fairy's wings stilled, then twitched. The already pale blue faded nearly to white. "…Oh," was all she said.

"Is there a way to prove the difference between these 'guardian fairies' and regulars?"

"No."

"Anything? Anything at all?"

Perhaps it was the tinge of raw emotion that crept into the Chieftain's voice that made the fairy shiver. Quill himself wasn't sure if it was a slip, or calculated bait, but whichever one it was, it most certainly worked. "There's one way," the fairy was saying, then: "I mean, not really, it's nothi—"

And the Chieftain didn't miss a beat: "So there is a way?"

But the fairy missed several beats and then more, and when her voice finally sputtered back to life, the words were mangled by a strange new fear. "That's… no, I mean—I mean it's not… I was just… that's not something I can—"

"You just said—"

"I know what I said, but—"

"Then why are—"

"It's not something I can just—"

"And why not?" said the Chieftain firmly. "You mentioned it yourself. Why isn't it something you can just…" There was a pause as he realized that he'd cut her off before she'd finished the sentence, so he filled in the rest of the sentence with a hand gesture.

"It's something that… only shows itself after…" She paused, then finished with new firmness: "It only shows itself after a long period of time. It's an invalid method."

"Invalid or not, I would still like to know."

The air under Quill's hand bristled again, this time from indignation. "It wouldn't do you any good!"

"Excuse me for prying, but my opinion has not changed."

"I can't excuse you until your opinion does."

"Then perhaps you shouldn't have brought it up in the first place."

"That's—" she began angrily, then stopped. When she spoke again, there was an odd note in her voice. "…Yes. Yes, I shouldn't have brought it up. I spoke without thinking," she admitted. "You won't believe me without evidence, and… and that was the only thing I could think of. So I said it. Because I need you to believe me—not for my sake, or for yours. You have my ward somewhere, and he needs me, and I need him. If the way I can get back to him is by getting out of this bottle, and the way to get out of this bottle is to convince you to let me go, and the way to convince you to let me go is to convince you that I'm cannot heal your son, then that's what I need to do.

"But this is an invalid method," she repeated. "It won't do you any good."

They waited a few seconds, but when she didn't say anything more, the Chieftain frowned and fixed her with a level stare. The Chieftain stood. Placed his hands on the desk. Looked down at her, the shutters behind his eyes shuddering.

"If my son can't walk, he may never get a scale; and if he doesn't get a scale he can't fly; and if he can't fly he can't be chieftain; and there's twenty other politicians with sons who can walk and fly and are more than willing to take the opportunity to seize the spotlight and shove my son into a infamy and a life of an outcast for being The Prince Who Couldn't Live Up To His Birthright. There's far more than twenty who never thought my son was good enough to be chieftain in the first place, and I haven't had to replace the logs in my fireplace because there's more than enough letters pushing me to disown him that I can burn instead. And perhaps I've never been the best parent, perhaps I've never been there for him, but I'm still a father and I wanted to be there; and I'll be damned if I fail him now—so please, not because of your imaginary ward and your excuses, but because this is about about my son's legs and his entire future and relationship with the only family he has left, tell the truth."

—was what the Chieftain should have said. But what he actually said was:

"Excuse me for prying, but my opinion has not changed."

For somebody committing a crime, Medli took an awfully long time. First, she bowed to him, introducing herself formally as "the great Valoo's attendant." Then she smoothed out her dress (clean and obviously a different one from the cavern, which was probably irreparable anyway), knelt as close as she could to the bars without touching, and asked, "You are Reoh... aren't you?"

Link didn't move from the far wall. "Yeah."

"Ah, good," she said, sounding relieved. "I was kind of guessing by what you were wearing. The..." She motioned to her face. "The mask's gone, so it's kind of... um..."

"...Yeah."

She leaned forward, motioning Link closer, and when he scooted towards her a foot or two, she lowered her voice as low as it would go and whispered, "Where's Emit?"

Link jabbed a thumb down the hallway. "Four cells down."

"Can he hear us?"

"Probably," Link said wryly. "The echo here is a work of art."

She bit her lip. With a nervous glance towards the door, outside which the Rito guard was posted, she pulled a piece of paper and a pencil from under her harp and scribbled a quick line on it. She slid the paper across the floor through the bars, dirt scratching underneath, and looked at him expectantly.

Link wants me to help you.

There wasn't really much Link could say to that statement, so he just waited. Medli, who had been waiting for him, was apparently putting up a valiant fight not to let her face crumble into an expression of exasperation and despair. With something like resignation, she pulled the paper back and wrote three words more.

But not Emit.

There wasn't much to be said to that, either, but he nodded anyway.

Why aren't you surprised?

She looked up and held out the pencil, a hint of accusation and triumph in her grip. Good call, he said to her in his head, where she wouldn't hear. He took the pencil and set it to the paper, not even a fraction of hesitation.

i am

He handed the pencil back through the bars, and when she didn't take it immediately, he let his eyebrow drift upwards in apparent confusion. She snatched the pencil back like the action had burned her somehow.

You don't look it.

He just shrugged. Innocent people were not troubled by such statements. When she silently urged him to take the pencil back and elaborate, his other eyebrow raised, as if mystified by her insistence. He took the pencil anyway.

i guess i don't show it

He gave another shrug and offered the pencil back. She didn't take it, and Link's jaw squared itself; innocent people were confused and suspicious of such insistence.

is this some sort of test

She recoiled, eyes widening, then shook her head a little too fast as she took the pencil.

I just

And she stopped there, unable to finish her thought. Her eyes slid to the side, clouded with worry, before she began again underneath her initial two words.

Can you tell me (and Medli's hand paused a moment to clutch at the pencil before continuing) what Link is trying to accomplish?

She offered the pencil to him, and he took it slowly, trying to buy time to figure out what to say to that. He twirled the pencil in his fingers as she looked at him expectantly, and he really, truly wished she wouldn't.

no.

He added the period at the end almost as an afterthought, jabbing the paper harder than he should have as if to prove that there truly wasn't anything more. He looked up at her, as if daring to tell him otherwise, but looked back down at Medli's desperate face staring down at the paper as if it had been her last hope. It probably had been. "Sorry," he mumbled.

"No," she said, standing with fatigue that Link suspected wasn't entirely just from a bad night's rest. "No, don't be. I'll be leaving now, then. I just wanted..." Her eyes lifted, searched the ceiling, then slid down to her feet. "Just wanted the truth," she admitted.

Well, he gave her credit for trying.

She left the paper and pencil where they were, resting at the edge of the bars; she bowed again for formality rather than respect, and slipped away down the hall and through the door. Resting on the paper was the key to Link's cell.

After he'd unlocked his cell; after he'd crept through the hallway without a moment's look back at Emit-Link's cell; after he'd snuck past the sleeping guard outside: that was when he slid into a room that he could only guess was the room the Ritos had given Kid-Link. There was a bed, a cabinet, and a window… not much else. The moonlight streamed through the window to darken the hills and valleys of the sheets, which lay stretched lazily along the floor. The bed was empty, and furthermore the mattress smooth, lacking the telltale depression of a body and lingering warmth of a bed recently vacated. No, Kid-Link had never been here.

Link didn't know why the sheets were on the floor, but he picked them up, shook them, examined them with an eye that only appeared to know far more than he really did about clean sheets, especially in the silvery coating of the moon discoloring everything. He put them on the bed, tucking the edges neatly under the edges, lining the corners up, smoothing the creases out first, then the nonexistent ones just to be extra, extra sure.

He figured that if he wanted this to be legitimate-looking as possible, he should do this properly and play the scene out, both mentally and physically. One, he supposed, would grab the Other—from where, exactly? Was One in a rush, or could he take his sweet time pick and choose?

One was probably somewhere in a direct line between the bed and the door in his approach, he decided. The Other was in the bed, sleeping, of course, the sheets tucked nicely around him. Did One pull the sheets off first, or just go for the Other? The latter, probably. And then for dramatic (and evidence) purposes, something would go wrong, the Other would make a huge fuss...

Link seized the sheets and yanked on it, scrunching it up into one big unsightly wrinkle, then twisted the top half over to form some sort of hourglass shape. Maybe One's legs were flailing? He smacked the pillow lightly for an obvious-looking dent in the middle where the head should have been lying before the drama, then shoved it onto the floor with the back of his hand with forced carelessness, concerning himself with making the mattress appear as lumpy as he could. Then he pulled the mattress out just a little, so it was skewed from its place on the bedframe.

The Other had put up quite a fight, Link mused as he surveyed the scene. Then One had to drag the Other out the door—dragging the sheets with him? Link grabbed one end and walked backwards a few feet, letting the fabric spill over the edge.

But there was one thing missing.

So he unwrapped the bandage around his hand, letting the fabric slip from his palm, and dropped it casually by the doorway as he left. He closed the door only halfway, carefully aligning it just so, and he paused in the doorway to watch the Triforce symbol ripple under his skin. It looked almost pleased. If hands could look pleased, that is.

"You know," Midna remarked, "guilt is considered an honorable emotion among the Twili."

Link said nothing.

After he'd unlocked his cell; after he'd crept through the hallway without a moment's look back at Emit-Link's cell; after he'd snuck past the sleeping guard outside; after he'd slid into Kid-Link's room and set up the evidence of his supposed kidnapping; that was when he finally stepped outside into the chilly night air and found Kid-Link waiting in the shallow tide of the sea.

"What took you?" was the first thing out of his mouth, and he sounded a little harsher than he'd intended from the gnawing fear and cold.

"Whaddaya mean, 'What took you'?" Reoh retorted. "How long do you think it's supposed to take to break out of jail?"

"You had a key…" But the end of his sentence trailed off; there wasn't any venom in his tone, just a deep-rooted need to be gone from here as fast as he could. He scuffed the wet sand that had built around his feet with the toe of his boot. "Where's… Emit?"

"Presumably back in his cell," said Reoh.

Reoh was, as Link could see now, a young man of sixteen or seventeen, standing tall and straight with something that wasn't so much pride or confidence as it was absolute determination to do what he thought best, to the best of his ability. But his head was bowed, leaning to the other side of clarity, face tilted away from the light of the moon and eyes lidded to a languid squint. Wide enough to see through; not wide enough to see everything through, nor enough to be seen into. It was the first time Link had seen him without his mask, and the lower half seemed to complete the unfinished picture of Reoh's expression.

Link couldn't be sure in the moonlight, but he thought that Reoh looked almost naturally fair-skinned, with a certain ruddy quality from the sun. He could have had a soft face, Link thought. A kind face. A face with firm lines that slid along the sides into a soft, set chin and smile, framing bright eyes. A clear face. But everything there was harsh, sharp in a jagged, graceless way. Sharp, hard, and clouded.

He'd heard that Emit didn't have his mask anymore, either. He'd never get to see Emit's face.

His eyebrows twisted upwards as his teeth bit back a stutter. He chose his words and repeated them in his head, remembering the syllables to shape in his mouth and how to speak them with an unwavering voice. And even then, his voice was quiet: "Let's go," was all he said, because if he didn't go now, he might never leave.

Before Link turned away, sympathy was the first emotion Link saw on Reoh's maskless face.

But this island, this small snippet of life, with all the blood, strife, and (no matter how selfless, still selfish) lies, wasn't done with them yet.

So Link took one step backwards, eyes fixed on the kid unraveling the ropes and stringing them through appropriate nooses and pulleys, securing knots where he should and re-securing them where he could. Link took a second step; the silver eye of the moon illuminated the tips of the waves and the back of Kid-Link's head, and only a few rays leaked through the curtain of his hair. A third step; beside the kid, the boat opened his mouth again, only to be met with a shake of his head like before.

Link disappeared into the shadow of the tunnel, turned, and came nose-to-nose with his own face.

Emit-Link's expression remarkably resembled a statue's as Link backed away, exposing his surprise at the other's unwelcome closeness to the light, then ducked back into grey and circled around further away from the boat.

"I need to tell you something," murmured Emit-Link.

It should have been Emit-Link demanding Link to tell him something, not the other way around, and that alone made him suspicious. After a moment's hesitation, he nodded further into the tunnel, and they broke into a silent walk, for once in time with each other.

There, on the far side of the island, was where they stopped. There was no moon on this side. The shadow of the island stretched out far across the ocean. The only light streamed from the tunnel, and both stood out of its reach; but the mists of it reached just the edges of Emit-Link's face, and the frame of his face and shoulder were highlighted in silver. The rest of him—his dirty clothes, tangled hair, clenched fists—faded away. Between the shoulder and the face, Link's eyes stayed firmly fixed on his shoulder.

Emit-Link took a breath, and Link tried so hard not to flinch. "I don't know what's going on," Emit-Link began, then held up a hand before Link could speak. "I don't know, but right now, I don't care."

Suspicion glossed over Link's expression, curling his lips into a scowl.

But Emit-Link's eyes (or what he could dared see from his peripheral vision) were as strong Link had ever seen them, clear with newfound purpose—a tangible, reachable goal to work for. "They took Navi," he said softly.

"…Oh," said Link.

The other nodded. "And I'm going to get her back," he declared, voice low and firm.

There were so many things Link could have said. He was so serious right now, and it was Navi, the fairy who'd left him—it would have been too easy. But in the end, all he did was lift his head with all the mockery he could muster and reply, "You better not be asking for my help."

"I'm not. But—" The waves slid smoothly along the shore, a silent shhh in the background that Emit-Link's gaze darted towards and back. "But I have to find her. And you're—both of you, the kid too—you're leaving."

"Yeah."

"You're leaving now," he emphasized. "But right now, I..." He paused. "I will find Navi."

"I know."

"Then wait for me," he asked. "Wait for me until dawn—just dawn. And if I'm late, leave without me."

(He was always late, Link thought. Late to save Hyrule from Ganon. Late to save Termina from Majora's Mask. Late to save Saria from lonely years sitting on a tree stump deep in the Lost Woods.

Life had stopped for him then, and waited for him, would have waited for him until he died and then some—until forever, perhaps.

But life wasn't supposed to wait. When life waited, it began to die, and even though it would wait for the Hero of Time until the world wasted away, that didn't mean that it would survive.)

CH37 END

A/N: …Well, hell. I have no idea if I can restart this thing so long after its last update. I passed the one-year mark at chapter thirty-five, and since then the story's passed it's two-year mark. It's likely that of the people who've bothered to read this chapter (and I'm not banking on the number of people reading being particularly high, mind you) have forgotten everything, since I forgot quite a bit myself.

But due to some amazing people who've managed to keep reviewing and reading so long after the last update—you know who you are—I finally managed to get up off my ass and wrap up this arc. Plus, I managed to get my head on straight and re-read the whole thing (all 36 of them) as well as the reviews (all 338 of them), and decided that I should give this another spin. So the story's not what I want it to be, and I've made mistakes, but I don't have to scrap the whole thing. (Unless you disagree.)

Alternatively, if you don't like my sob story of demotivation, you can blame the Chieftain and Navi. I literally rewrote that scene five times. No joke. I can show you the rough drafts. The scenes ranged from creeper-Navi to the Chieftain winning the award for Worst Father to plain, petty schoolgirl fighting.

So even if it's too late, here's to a second chance anyway.

…Holy carp, did that last line of my author's note just dramatically complement the chapter? Oh ho. Oh ho ho ho. Oh ho ho ho ho ho ho.