_-_|_-_

_-_|_-_

            He was kissing her!

            Elia could not believe it for a moment.  But soon her found her mouth opening, and Link's tongue inside.  He kissed her deeply, tenderly.  She could taste his sweet breath, and she relished it.  The girl could not fight back.  She didn't want to.

            Elia put her arms around him, pressing deeper into the kiss.  She didn't want it to end.  For what seemed like hours, but was only minutes, they kissed.  They seemed to say everything they had needed to say for weeks, but couldn't translate to words.  Their frustrations, their worries, their secret delights--all expressed in one gesture.  Elia was so happy, a tear slid down her cheek.

            And it ended all too soon.

            Link had suddenly tensed, realizing what he was doing.  He had felt the tear that Elia had shed.  He pulled away, fighting both his own desires and Elia's.  He set her down on the floor and backed away, his hand over his mouth.

            "Link…?" Elia breathed finally, rising to her knees.  She looked up at him.

            Link saw the fear in her big brown eyes.  He took another step backward, almost tripping over the big armchair behind him.  He staggered back, around it.  Before going into the hall, he mumbled an apology.

            A while later, when Elia knew he was shut up in his room, Elia made her own way to bed.  She pulled off her clothes and slipped on her nightdress.  The night was cold, but she was warmed by the excitement in her heart.

            Hidden within the safety of her sheets, she relived the moment again.  She could still taste his steamy breath in her mouth.  She would never forget that taste, the smell.  He had held her close and told her a million things words could not express.  And she had told him those things as well.

            The next morning, Link did not come to breakfast.  Worried, Elia made up a tray that included a steaming mug of herbal brew.  She knocked on the door and, when he did not answer, she pushed the door open.

            He was sitting on the bed in the dark, cold room.  His eyes were on his feet, which were folded almost beneath him.  His chest was bare, showing the huge scars, but his cream-colored pants were still on his legs.

            "Link, are you ill?" she asked, taking a step towards him.

            His head snapped up and he looked at her.  It didn't seem he had slept at all, from the eerie drowsiness in his eyes.  He seemed tired, yet scared and determined to stay awake.

            She had never seen him like this.  She was scared.  What was going on?

            "Elia," he said finally, in a soft voice.

            Elia dared a few steps closer to him so that she could listen better.

            He gave her a very strange sort of smile, weak and worried.  "You must forgive me for what I did last night.  I took your first kiss, didn't I?"

            "Oh, Link, it's quite all right--"

            "I don't think it is."

            She jumped.  Never, even with all the fights they had shared, had the girl heard his voice so firm.  This was not the Link she knew.

            "I think staying in that bed for months did something to my mind," he said, chuckling softly.  But it was not his laugh.  It was not a laugh at all, really.  "You must let me beg forgiveness.  It was just a strange sort of thing.  I'll be leaving in a few days, so there's no need to worry about it--"

            "I see," she said, fighting back the emotions that were mounting up in her heart.  "You, um, didn't mean it.  I-It's okay," she stuttered, forcing a smile on her face.  "W-We can j-just forget that it h-happened, o-okay?"

            She hurriedly excused herself and left the room, shutting the door tightly behind her.

            Now she let the tears come.

            The days passed slowly and awkwardly.  Elia went to work a lot more, her excuse being that there were travelers beginning the season early.  The truth was, though, that she could hardly stand being home, where Link couldn't bring himself to look at her.

            She tried to tell Dain what happened, but found the words too hard to get out.  Link had kissed her with passion and tenderness.  Why had he suddenly changed and thought it all a terrible idea?

            Elia remembered that only once he had mentioned love to her.  What was it?  Something about loving Princess Zelda, wasn't it?

            Perhaps his heart belongs to someone far away, she thought.  Someone far away from Kakariko…someone far away from me, a silly village girl.  But she remembered him also saying that love and friendship wouldn't work for him.  That maybe everyone else could find it, but it wouldn't work for him.  But why?

            These days she wouldn't come home to Link already setting up the table.  He would be buried in a book, holed up in his room, or out some place.  She noticed once the strong smell of whiskey on him.

            It pained her to know that he was so depressed.  She had always thought Link much too noble to turn to the bottle, but she supposed, at his core, he was no different than other men.  Bitter, she snapped at him about it, saying she hoped he found solace in the bottle that she couldn't offer.

            "You are not my mother," Link had snapped back.  But Elia had dared a peek at him and seen pain in his eyes.  And longing.

            "I do not know what is going on these days," Elia muttered.  "And perhaps it would do you good to have a mother now, even at your mature age."  She scoffed.  "Someone to keep tabs on you."

            "I never had a mother, and I think I turned out fine."

            "Are you saying I didn't?"

            "You are still growing, child," he said.

            "I am not a child!" she screamed back.

            Link had muttered something under his breath, and, if she wasn't mistaken, it was something like "I wish you were right."

            Ignoring this, Elia had cried, "Why do we have to fight all the time?  Aren't we good enough of friends not to do so?"

            "There are fights between friends," Link had corrected, raising a mug of coffee to his lips.  He hardly ever drank coffee, but it was the morning after he'd had five whiskeys at the other tavern in Kakariko, which was a much more unscrupulous place than Dain's.  "There are fights in every kind of relationship."

            "Why, though?"

            "Because people are not mirror images of each other, no matter how close they are," he said matter-of-factly, taking another big sip of his drink.  He rubbed his right temple; his head was pounding terribly.

            "It would be boring that way, I suppose," mused Elia.

            "Of course it would be.  And then we wouldn't be human, would we?  Everyone needs a good fight to rile them up."

            "Don't slurp!"

            "See, it really gets you going in the morning, doesn't it?"

            "Why must you always tease me?"

            "Why must you always be so sensitive?"

            She sighed.

            He slurped up a bit more coffee.

            "Elia," he said softly after the tense moment had passed.  "I'm leaving today."

            She blinked.

            "The snow is gone, and obviously we are quite sick of each other…"

            "I guess."  She turned her back to him and picked up a dish.  She dunked it into the cold water and began rubbing furiously at it.

            "Elia…isn't that dish already clean?"

            And it was true.  All the dishes from breakfast were clean already, save his coffee mug.  The fight left her.  She let the plate fall to the floor, crashing spectacularly in a display of porcelain shards.

            "Elia--!"

            "I'll pick it up later," the young woman muttered, dragging her feet to sit at the table.  She threw herself into picking slivers of plate out of her leather slippers, letting her tousled brown hair block her expression.  She didn't want him to know she was beginning to cry.

            "And I thought you would be happy to be rid of me," he said to himself.  A bit louder, Link said, "Anyway, I still want you to answer me my question."

            When she was pretty sure she wouldn't give her emotions away, Elia asked, "What question?"

            "Why you starved yourself so I could eat well, why you neglected to buy yourself new clothes so I could have what I wished--why you sacrificed your time to spend with me.  I can pay you back, too; I make money pretty easily."

            "I don't want any money," she told him.

            "Are you sure?  I will pay you back somehow, you know.  For everything you've done, you deserve it, Elia."

            "You damned idiot!"

            "What?"  He tried to look at her, tried to see what was hidden behind the mass of golden-brown waves.  Why had she snapped at him yet again?

            Elia said more quietly, "Don't people just do things for each other, for people they care about?"

            "What?" he said again.

            She turned to face him, pushing the chair backwards to fall over as she stood.  She screamed through the flood of tears that rained down from her saddened brown eyes, her voice filled with emotion, "You damned idiot!  I love you!"

_-_|_-_