Midna sat cross-legged on the ground, barely noticing that the severed hand of the departed usurper was still less than ten feet away from her, and that the dead wolf form of Link….no, the Link she knew...was right behind her. She sat directly opposite from the Link that knelt before her.
She blinked. She had seen so many things in such a short time. She had held the ancient Fused Shadows almost literally in her hands. She had witnessed the humans of the realm turning into phantoms. She had even seen an invisible, bloated bug overwhelm a hero that had taken out things more than twice its size. But this was a bridge that even she had trouble crossing.
"You're from the future?" When she saw Link nod in confirmation, she slapped her knee. "And here I was, thinking I'd seen everything!" She shook her head. "Ugh. What a jam, what another mystery cog in the works. And speaking of which, why aren't you already dead?" She pointed at the dead Link to the side. "If you really are from the future, and he's from….here, shouldn't you be dead, too?"
Link put a finger to the bridge of his nose. That would be the logical conclusion, but this was something beyond his understanding.
"Well, it doesn't matter!" Midna shrugged and laughed. She hardly noticed his nonplussed reaction. WIth a flick of her wrist, the Fused Shadows materialized. "It's time for payback! I'll prove Zant wrong about being the King of Twilight, let alone this world! You'll see!" She paused, looking back at Link.
"Why isn't this working?"
Link already knew what was churning in her head. He thought back to when he and...the other Midna had defeated Zant. She had tried to regain but it had not worked then either. The curse would only go away when the King of Light and Shadow was defeated...
"Hey!" Midna's voice cut through his thoughts again, sounding a little more shrill than before. "Plan B! Let's take this up with Princess Zelda like you suggested!"
It was strange, so Link thinks as he uncovered a drainage pipe in the middle of a Hyrule Castle Town road and hopped down. Memories of the past are coming back to him. Not this past, but the one he knew. He was still a wolf in his own mind, with Midna hanging off his back. He felt grateful that she was safely tucked into his shadow, and not deathly white and breathing her lungs out, but...
"Hey, hey now..." Midna calls out to him. "No need to lose your head in the clouds. Speed it up!"
Link grunted in annoyance and picked up the pace. This route was not the same as before, but a few more twists and turns down the stone walkways brought him to a staircase that lead to the roofs of Hyrule Castle. He moved forward, fighting gravity as he scaled the tiles and made his way to his destination.
The overhead window of the tower was still open, and he leapt through. At that moment, Midna saw fit to manifest from his shadow and follow behind him as he ran up the stairs, humming all the while.
Link knew that Zelda would be more than a little shocked to see her visitors like this. So it did not surprise him to see that her reaction to his barging through the iron-shod doors with Midna close behind would be an open-mouthed gape.
Zelda tipped back from her sitting position on the bed, momentarily lost for words. She gathered her black cloak a little tighter around herself before pushing back her hood and looking at Link and Midna a little more clearly.
The young hero was no longer in his wolf form, appearing as a tall, well-built young man dressed in the green tunic of old. The blue eyes that peeked out from the blonde bangs showed of a mixture of anxiety, fear, and confusion. Midna levitated right behind him, still smirking and with her arms folded.
Zelda put two fingers of her right hand to the bridge of her nose and sighed. Addressing Link, she began to speak slowly. "So you mean to tell me that someone in the future, your future, stole the Ocarina of Time and brought you here?"
"That's what it's called?" Midna cut in.
"Yes." Zelda ran a hand through her hair. "That instrument is one of the most sacred, heavily guarded possessions of the Royal Family. The effects of it are not fully understood to this day. It has been said that it can send people back in time by years, or a maximum of three days. But with a few notes, one can tear the timeline itself asunder and make use of it as they chose. They..."
"Gotcha, gotcha!" Midna interrupted. She jabbed her thumb at Link. "But that doesn't explain why he's still around. If he died in the present...or past, or whatever, and he's from the future, shouldn't he be dead, too?"
Zelda was silent for a moment, then crouched down on the stone floor. Link followed suit, and Midna levitated downward until she landed on her feet. The princess reached down with an extended finger.
"Think of time," she began, "as a tree trunk." Link and Midna watched as she traced a straight line in the dust. "The primary line of time," she continued, "continues straightwise and strong. But if you use the Ocarina in an attempt to manipulate time," she drew a second, shorter line perpendicular from the first, "you will receive branches."
Midna blinked. "Like…a whole new world?"
"Yes." Zelda looked at Link. "In spirit, the world this Link comes from is as alien to this one as…the Twilight Realm."
"And so Zant couldn't really kill him," Midna slapped a hand against her forehead. "Just his backup."
"Precisely."
"So basically," Midna went on, "that the Link here isn't the Link I knew?"
This time it was Link who reacted. He turned to her and shook his head. He was not her Link.
And she was not his Midna.
"And you're telling me," MIdna floated back up into the air, startling Link in the process. "that it's impossible to go back in time, for real, and actually change everything?"
Zelda did not answer that question.
"Yes, I suppose that'd be too convenient. If Zant knew all this, he'd be thanking his lucky stars I couldn't use go back and undo everything he did. Anyway, what do we call this…brave new world of ours?" She snapped her fingers. "I know! World B!"
The thief walked into the alleyway. After he made sure there was not another soul skulking around, he let himself lean back into the wall of the stone building and sighed. Things have not been going as planned. He had heard the stories about the artifacts stashed away in that mansion. He had gotten himself a job as a manservant there six months ago when the old one had decided to quit to stay with his family. No one had dared to openly talk to him about the secret contents of the location, of course, but judging from how cautiously they moved, he deduced that they had been hidden in one of the bedrooms, under a loose stone in the floor.
He had found the ocarina and the harp there. There would have been just a few seconds worth to snatch what he needed and hide it, so he had thought, not guessing that a guard had been just a few steps from the door when he reached down into the hole. He had heard the whispers and committed them to memory. The ocarina would let him go back in time, and the harp would create different pathways in time.
Or was it the other way around?
He stood silent for a moment, paralyzed, his hand tight on the ocarina. Then he stamped his foot and let out an involuntary howl.
"Damn!"
Hi! Sorry for the delay! I've been trying out a present tense for the past couple chapters, but in the end I figured it just wasn't doing it for me. As for the Ocarina-related time travel, I'm basing it on both the Hyrule Historia timeline, and the fact that there's a limited way to go back in time wholesale in Majora's Mask.
