Disclaimer: Midna and The Legend of Zelda are the intellectual property of Nintendo.

Entwilightened

Chapter 2

This is not happening, he thought, this kind of thing does not happen to me. It happens to dashing and rugged heroes who are well-equipped to handle this sort of thing.

He stared harder at the figure on his bedroom floor, hoping that perhaps she'd simply disappear like the hallucination she certainly was. The hallucination brought on by…by…

Absolutely nothing. He took a deep breath, exhaled, and sat down on his bed. The room spun and his ears rang. He gritted his teeth, clenched his eyes shut and focused all his willpower on not panicking.

I'm going to open my eyes and it's just going to be one of my friends, pranking me. They'll jump up and shout "You just got punk'd!" Yep. Everything's completely and absolutely normal.

He opened his eyes. The impossibly-real fictional character was still unconscious in front of him. Fiery orange-and-yellow hair, pale blue-grey skin tone that darkened to black in places, covered in what seemed to be luminescent blue tattoos. She was dressed in what appeared to be a bikini top-with-added-cloak. It had a hood, sleeves, a cape and everything. Completing the ensemble was a floor length loincloth, of all things. The entire outfit was black with grey-and-green trim. She was, without a doubt, the very same character from the video game.

He registered all of this in moments, before his adrenaline-addled mind noticed the far more important details.

She was covered in cuts, and bleeding. Stranger still, her blood wasn't red as he might've expected, but a pale silvery-green. His stomach gave a lurch as he realized just how badly injured she was. The room spun yet again, but he ignored the sensation this time and lurched from his position on the bed. He stumbled with all his speed to the bathroom and ripped open the medicine cabinet. He began frantically shoving bottles and boxes aside and tearing them out of the cabinet in his search. After an eternity, he found what he was looking for, and grabbed a nondescript brown bottle.

"Yes! Now I need...dammit…" he scanned the remains of the cabinet, and found nothing suitable. His gaze landed on an unused roll of toilet paper and he groaned. "It'll have to do…" Had something like this happened a year ago, he would have had enough medical supplies to perform minor surgery if necessary. Now, he was cursed with what he had.

He plucked it from its position on top of the counter and ran back to his room. He set his supplies down on the floor next to the unconscious princess. He twisted the cap off the brown bottle of hydrogen peroxide and wadded up a ball of toilet paper. He poured the peroxide on the makeshift sterilized sponge and went to work cleaning up the dried blood. He shuddered slightly as he touched the strange-looking stuff, half-expecting it to be acidic, or posses some other horrible property. Fortunately, his fears were baseless, and he began the process of stabilizing his unconscious houseguest.

As he worked, he was astounded at just how much blood there was. There were tiny cuts everywhere, some he didn't even find until he cleaned up the barely-coagulated blood coating them. In other places, there were long ragged tears in the skin, as though something jagged had been dragged across it. He shuddered as he thought about it. The pain must have been excruciating.

As he cleaned up the cuts, he wrapped the nastier looking ones in toilet paper to serve as makeshift bandages until he could find a more permanent solution. In a halfhearted attempt to keep them sterilized, he drizzled the peroxide on the tissue. This worked well until he reached her head and found most of her forehead coated in the silvery-green stuff. He followed the trail of dried blood, and found the source—a matted mess of blood and hair on the scalp that was still oozing. He winced at the sight of it, and gently dabbed away the blood. Once he had cleared away most of the fresh blood, he cleaned and bound the wound as best he could at the awkward angle. As he finished, he looked down and slumped. It looked like that was the last of the particularly dangerous looking injuries. The unnatural silence of the powerless apartment returned, broken only by his gradually-slowing heartbeat and the dark-skinned princess's shallow breathing.

As he allowed his tunnel-vision to subside, he sat back and looked with some satisfaction over his improvised bandage job. It wasn't great, as far as first-aid went, but it would hold for now. An entire bottle of hydrogen peroxide and nearly half a roll of toilet paper weren't ideal for medical emergencies, but he hadn't exactly had time to be choosy. At least he hadn't had to improvise a splint for broken bones. That experiment with his friends in roof-hopping had not been pleasant for anybody involved.

Not one to allow him a moment of relaxation, his mind prodded him with further worries—what had caused all those injuries? And what about that head trauma? He didn't know much about head wounds, but he did know that they could lead to serious damage if left untreated. Or maybe treatment didn't matter? As he realized just how little he knew about the situation he struggled to keep his panic from bubbling back up to the surface.

Okay. Facts. You have a fictional, real, but fictional character unconscious and bleeding in your bedroom. You've stopped the bleeding for now. You don't know what caused it. You know nothing about Twili physiology. You don't know why she's he—

Oh. Shit. Physiology.

It hadn't even occurred to him that her physiology might be significantly different. What if hydrogen peroxide was poisonous to her, or some other quirk like that? He clutched his forehead in his hands and massaged his temples with his fingertips.

"Okay. She needs further treatment," he said, pacing. "I know that much. Treatment…treatment treatment treatment…hospital? No, no way, can't take that kind of risk, too public anyway…what about local…ah! Duh!" He smacked his forehead and made to grab the telephone. As he reached to the doorway he glanced back at his "patient". She hadn't moved.

"Don't die on me, all right?" He grimaced.

He grabbed the telephone from the cradle, why oh why didn't I charge my cell phone, hit the Phone button and dialed the number for his doctor's office.

"Pick up, pick up, pick up…" He never thought that the sound of a phone ringing could frustrate him so much.

Finally, "Doctor Kiowa's office, can I help you?"

He cheered silently. Doctor Kiowa herself had picked up. He didn't know what he'd tell some interchangeable receptionist. "Yes, hello, I've got a fictional alien here who's suffered massive trauma" didn't seem like it'd garner a response. The doctor, however, he knew personally.

"Doc!" he nearly shouted. He cleared his throat, and took a deep breath. Calm…"Doc, I've got uh, kind of an emergency. It's me, Alec. Alec Balkojec. A uh…a friend of mine is really hurt, all cut up. I'm going to bring them in to your place. Can you be ready for them in…like, ten minutes?" He was hoping that the doctor didn't ask too many questions, or question too closely.

"Hurt? How?" Came the response from the other end of the line, "And what kind of severity should I expect?"

Good, she's going to help…he thought, sagging with relief. "I'm not…exactly sure how it happened. Severity…uh, lots of little cuts and a couple of nasty looking gashes. Oh, and a really bad looking head wound. No idea what caused it. I did my best to clean and bind the wounds, but I'm no doctor, y'know?"

"Alec…I'm not even going to ask how it happened. Get down here, ASAP. I'll be ready."

"Thank you so much, doc! I'll be there as soon as I can!"

"Be careful. I don't want to have to sew up your leg again." With that, she hung up. He swore he heard an exasperated sigh before the line went dead.

He grinned briefly before the gravity of the situation returned to him. He had to transport Midna to the doctor's office somehow. She wasn't exactly going to blend in. He needed something to cover her with. A blanket wasn't going to work, it'd be too suspicious. He wracked his brain for a moment, before a solution offered itself.

He dove into his closet, flinging old clothes left and right before he got to the bottom of the pile and found what he was searching for. A floor-length black trench coat he had used as a Halloween costume two years ago. Perfect. He pulled it out of the closet and laid it out on the floor next to the comatose princess. He knelt down and gently lifted her, placing her on top of the coat. He slipped her arms into the sleeves, and belted the coat closed. He lifted her head carefully, and slipped the hood of her cloak on. It wouldn't hold up to close scrutiny, but he didn't have much choice.

Now for the hard part. He looked at his arms and grimaced. It was not going to be fun getting her down to the ground floor and into the car; his arms could only be described as "scrawny". He sighed and kneeled down next to his patient, and slid his arms under her—beneath the knees and the shoulders–and lifted. He stumbled, and his foot slammed into the ground hard as he adjusted his balance.

She's heavier than she looks, flashed through Alec's mind, as well as Aaargh ow dammit.

He stood up, adjusted his shoulders and moved to the front door of the apartment. He fumbled with the knob, opened it, and locked it from the inside before closing it. He wouldn't be able to lock the deadbolt from here, so the knob would have to hold until he got back. He awkwardly closed the door, and proceeded down the hallway to the elevator lobby. He pressed the call button and settled back to wait. He glanced around nervously every so often. He wasn't doing anything wrong, but if any of his neighbors caught him holding an unconscious, poorly-bandaged, strangely-colored woman…

Well, who knew what'd happen?

Finally, the elevator dinged and the doors slid open. He stepped inside and, bracing his back against the elevator wall, hit the button for the ground floor with his shoe. He sighed. Soon, he would be on his way. He hated waiting. He knew the elevator was faster than the stairs, but just standing around and waiting felt wrong somehow.

Just when he thought his nerves could take no more, the elevator slowed to a stop. He moved to step out when he looked at the floor indicator. They were still on the third floor.

Somebody was boarding the elevator.

Notes: Hooray, our protagonist has a name. The tension mounts! How will Alec handle this?

In case you're wondering why Midna bleeds silver-green, well, why not? We never actually see Zelda characters bleed. And it helps increase the weird-factor for poor Alec.

Chapter three is written, and will be edited and uploaded soon. Expect it shortly.