Author's Note: Greetings from 2019 lmao. I'm still kicking.

Of Either Mistress

It was while she in the throes of vined hell that he piped up.

Um, hey, Midna. I realize this isn't the best time…

A pause, during which she wielded Link from palm to other palm against blistering thickets of magma.

The Master Sword carved its way across bristles and burns, along the searing, creamy texture of liquid fire, sending it flying in two halves harmlessly past her shoulders.

Midna's eyes widened suddenly. Her cheeks heated, having nothing to do with the battle.

"Oh, for crying out-"

Pale features contorted as she blustered.

"Our minds are connected, Link! I can feel what you're feeling, and really? Now?!"

It's just that maybe I won't get another chance to say it. Well, think it.

Midna clumsily ducked a column of foliage - twisted sharp, strung together so it would gouge, so it would rupture - before her step faltered and she nearly stumbled.

"It's really not necessary!" The sky, a film of red. "Please, w-we don't need words…? Right? Can we just let this go?"

I'm a sap at heart, Midna. You know that best.

Oh, and he was amused by this. The cheeky bastard. Midna would never live it down.

Jokes aside. I love you.

"Ugh!" she swung him like a baseball bat, steel battering aside pockets of seething embers like they were pinecones. "Ugh! Ugh, you are a piece of work."

She grunted as emerald claws clutched at her, as she was sent soaring into the side of a teetering bluff.

"I know you do," she breathed, gravel tumbling along either side. She sat amidst rubble, a cleaved alcove of the mountain, bent vertical. Her eyes, closed but facing the facade of the heavens. Her neck, tilted, throat exposed, sheened silver amidst the pyres of the end of the world.

"I know. I…" Her tongue was strangling itself. The words were thick against her lungs. "You're dumb. This is dumb. I love you too, but god you're stupid."

Inside her mind rang laughter. Clear and impish and warped by cheek.

But from the distance, suddenly descending from the mountain's summit: blue.

Red and green, shrieking gleefully - remorselessly, savagely - towards her, the roar of a waterfall, of a thousand stars blinking out of existence, of bone drifting in the river.

Sisters reunited at last. A princess, slack and dangling. Flimsy flesh among the colors, the trio spinning around and around, rapturously vivid in their love for each other, and Zelda was dropped in the excitement.

Midna was dark in her haste. Twilight wrapped around her ankles, and her speed was a shower of ebony.

Barely, the tips of her fingers caught the hem of Zelda's tattered dress.

She cradled her head in her lap. Cold, like a corpse. Lips pale, cracked, almost blue. Zelda opened her eyes. They were listless. The blue of them no longer lightning but fog, but mist and wreathed shadows in the corners, so pale they were almost grey.

"Zelda…" Midna bit her lip. "What happened to Ganondorf? A-And Marin?"

Zelda's eyes slowly roved hers.

"Gone," her voice a croak. A whisper, frayed at the edges. Gone was the velvet.

She spoke it like death. Like the reaper in her throat.

"Both gone. Nobody left."

"We're still here, Zelda. Link and I."

Midna's lip trembled.

And Zelda smiled. Bland, tasteless. The sort of depthless thing that might have been a trite ornament used once then forever covered by tarp. A smile forlorn and told in wisps. Composed of smoke.

"I'm sorry," she said. "You can't win."

She spoke those final words in the hollowed recesses of Midna's mind again and again, long after she died in her arms.

Author's Note:

Hi. It's been more than a year, but hi. I promise this story's going to be finished even if it takes many more (BUT IT SHOULDN'T, GODDD). Thank you so much to all readers who have stuck with me!

Also this is getting pretty depressing even for my writing LOL.

Review?! I'd love to hear any thoughts.