I want to start off by thanking you all. I've gotten some incredibly supportive feedback and that's always a good thing- if it wasn't for all of you just being here I'd probably never have written the first one, and if it wasn't for your support I doubt I'd have bothered to write a second. As it is I've stayed up late four nights in a row writing installments, and I'm loving every minute of it. You all are good people.

Anyways, I'm beginning to get a feel for the thread of the plot- and yes, there is actually going to be one. I'm as surprised as you are. This takes place not long after the last moment, and takes a twist near the end that actually came as sort of a surprise to me. In the end I just decided that the story wouldn't work without it, dramatically speaking.

As always, I appreciate any feedback you can give me on my work. Thanks again for reading.

Moments: Coronation

"Marry me."

The request was so unexpected, so fundamentally bizarre and unanticipated, that Link caught himself soberly considering it on its own merits. There would be benefits, and not only to him. He could see the possibilities marching on through his head like the vanguard of a rebel army, heralding a dimly foreseen future.

Nevertheless, one had to stick to one's principles. What else was left to him?"

"I don't love you," Link replied honestly. "I don't even particularly like you. What respect I have for you is tempered by how little help you were to me when I needed you."

Princess Zelda frowned coolly. Above the throne, the goddesses looked down with marble disdain from their places about the Triforce. Link wondered idly if they were upset with her for proposing or him for refusing before dismissing the line of inquiry as unnecessarily inane.

"I was incapacitated," she explained, as if he hadn't known. "first by the Zant's Twili and then by Ganondorf personally. There was little enough I could have done."

"You could have given your army proper training," noted Link, "before. You could have set up a functioning government. Things fell apart while you were gone, did you know that? That one bridge that fell in- I paid for the repairs myself. Out of my own pocket, you might say. For a while there Malo was more or less running your economy, and if you want to know what scares me the most in hindsight it's that particular fact. To be frank, princess, I was very bitter for a long time about how much of my war could have been prevented if you had been doing your job."

Zelda narrowed her eyes and Link cursed himself for toeing the line. It was easy to forget how truly dangerous the princess was.

"I could have you arrested, you know," she said.

"Has the house of kings grown so degenerate?" asked Link curiously. "I gave you your throne back. I think I'm entitled to be critical of what you've done with it."

"If I've been doing such a poor job, then marry me. As king you'd be commander of the army and you'd be free to enact whatever changes to the civil government as you'd see fit, as long as they didn't compromise my personal agenda."

"Which would be?"

"None of your business."

"I fail to see what benefit you get out of it."

"I have been a princess for a long, long time, Link," she replied, wearily, without rancor. "I'd like to be a Queen before I die."

Link scowled. "I don't buy it. If you wanted a husband you'd have the whole of the nobility to choose from, and practically any one of them would be easier to control than me. Hell, you could marry Ralis and bring the Zoras in under the Hylian banner. You have to know I won't fight for you. I fail to see why you'd be interested."

"Ralis isn't the hero who cut down Ganondorf and pushed the Twilight back into Midna's world. Besides, there's a precedent. The Hero of Time-"

"Fairy tale endings!" he cried scornfully. "I've met the Great Fairies, princess, and they were wantons with as little loyalty to the land and the kingdom as you have to the city in the sky. No, you'll not get me that way. If this were a fairy tale you would be as wise as you were lovely and your father would still be alive to give you away."

"And if this were a fairy tale," continued Zelda smoothly, "then we'd be marrying for love, and I believe you've already made your lack of interest in that quite clear. Forget about my motives for a moment-"

"It would be easier to forget them if I knew what they were-"

"-and think about your own best interests."

"Which are?"

"Oh, give it up, Link," said Zelda. "I don't think there's anything in the world you want less than another crisis like the one that gave Ganondorf back to the sunlit world. So you think I messed it up the first time around? Fine. This time, you can pay attention to the signs, and you can investigate every disturbance. With the royal treasury at your disposal and the army watching your back."

Link was suddenly immeasurably tired. "I've done this once before, princess," he said. "I don't want to be the hero anymore. There's a kid in Ordon who shows some promise-"

"And you'd do to him what Midna did to you? Where is your imp, by the way?"

There was a moment of silence, pregnant with grief.

"She…" said Link carefully "…elected to remain in Ordon. She was injured in the desert." He paused. "I've been fighting monsters for a long time, princess. Somewhere along the line it stopped being important to me to pick up the pieces afterwards. You can have Colin."

"Link, wait." There was concern on Zelda's face, pain on her regal, slightly sharp features. "We don't have to fight about this. It's too important to leave no room for negotiations. What do you want?"

The ancient stone halls of Zelda's throne room stretched out before him, but he wasn't seeing them. He was seeing a sly heart-shaped face, one eye picked out in autumnal shades of red and orange, sleek limbs manacled with glowing arabesques. He was seeing blue-black fur, a trim belly. Link was seeing what he couldn't have and the knowledge of that was more terrible than any enemy he had ever faced, more appalling than the humping, writhing, monstrous armies of Twilight.

He squeezed his eyes shut until he couldn't see her anymore and then he opened them again. The green vista of Hyrule rolled out before him like a carpet from the great portico of Zelda's castle. "What I want," he said, "you can't give me."

He did not hear her calling after him, or notice how the armored guards that bracketed the doors tensed, waiting for orders to bar his way, haul him off to the dungeons, sacrifice their lives to slow him down for one moment more. Supplicants and petitioners lined the stairwell, seeking audience with a princess who would never be a queen. Link silently wished them well on their errands and then changed his mind, wished them failure like he had failed, disappointment to match the monumental heights of his disappointment.

If Midna was still in Ordon he didn't know about it. He had awoken two mornings earlier to find her gone. What scant possessions and keepsakes she had gathered from her time in the sunlit world were missing- a stone chip hewn from a faceless statue, the bleached and boiled skeleton of the fish he had cooked for her.

She had taken things that belonged to him as well- his old cloth wrap, an artifact from the time before she had entered his life. On the landing, a bleary picture of him astride Epona- the only picture of himself that he had- was lying facedown on the table, out of its frame. Link was at a loss as to the significance of this. Did she expect to see him again? Could he hope they would be reconciled? Or had she taken the cloth simply to remind her of a person who had been briefly in her life and was in her life no more? There was no way of knowing. Midna's intentions remained as much of a mystery as they had been the hour of their meeting.

He had looked for her, calling out her name into the forest until his voice was hoarse and his face was numb with shouting, but if she had been there- flitting between the trees, riding on the shadows of the clouds- she had not answered him. He couldn't track her, not as a man. Midna smelled of dust and, faintly, of cinnamon. Her aroma lingered in his empty house until he could not bear it any longer and rode out to answer Zelda's summons.

He had reached the outskirts of Castle Town. Epona nickered nearby, grazing on the grass of the field. He let her be while he tried to clear his thoughts to the point where he could make a decision.

If he rode out straight along the path, the road would take him back to Ordon Village. He would fish in the early mornings, do his share of the eternal work of the ranch. He would live simply and quietly with his regrets. Perhaps, in time, he would take a wife. When he died they would bury him out by the pumpkin fields where they had laid the parents he had never known to rest. Or perhaps he would marry Zelda, train with the army, grow old in ermine robes with the heavy weight of the crown on his brow. Then he would be buried in the suffocating splendor of the royal crypts, with a golden sword in his hand that would remain bright and perfect forever even as his body dredged up the skeleton beneath.

If he rode out away from the road he would search for Midna, comb the world for a quarry that could make itself invisible and as insubstantial as the ebb and flow of the oceans of air that surrounded him. He would cry out her name in the rocky, echoing warrens of the Goron caverns and seek her face at the bottom of the lake, where the blind fish swam and the shipwrecks rotted into the numbing coldness of the water. If they knew her in Twilight he would go to Twilight and make them tell him where she was. It was no great task, not to Link, who had never surrendered to anyone or anything in his life. He knew he could do it. He would find Midna and he would tell her that he loved her.

He would keep to the road or stray from it. There were no other options, no shades of possibility. One path led, irreversibly, to his death. He didn't know about the other. With Midna nothing was certain.

On the road or off of it. Zelda or Midna. Link stood at the parting of the ways and knew that no man or god would tell him where to go next. Perhaps he had been abandoned. Perhaps he had left the path the goddesses had laid down for him and his actions were no longer of any importance to anyone aside from himself.

He found the idea intoxicating.

At length, he saddled Epona and rode off along the path he had chosen. He did not look back as he rode away.

. . .