THE DAYS IN FEBRUARY
by Cappucinno

Day 14, (Rewind, Link).

"Link, is there newfound curiosity you're not telling me about?"

"Goddamn it Malon." Link ground out, just barely resisting the urge to reach over and strangle his assistant. The redhead, for as long as he had known her, remained one of the few people in the world capable of getting a rise out of him. She was also the only person he knew that was so single-minded determined to meddle in the lives of everyone around her. "Shane and the bakery. The bakery."

"Ohhh. Well, that's a relief."

Link would have rolled his eyes if he thought the signal would get through Malon's fat head. Fortunately, he knew from experience not to waste his energy. Instead, he picked up another file and stared at the columns of inscrutable numbers pretending to make sense of them.

He couldn't. He couldn't make sense of any of it.

How could all of these columns, all of these employees, all of these products, all of this goddamn money end in a red bottom line? How could a company that was a veritable culinary juggernaut be this far under?

Provided, was two hundred million in the red really all that bad for such a big company? Link had no idea. And therein lay the problem.

And why the hell was the head of Dragmire Industries sitting on the Board of Directors vetoing every decision that had been proposed for the last three years?

He felt a headache coming on.

Red invaded his peripheral vision and he looked up just in to see his assistant (and friend, he'd admit that as irritating as she was she was a friend) straighten up and lean over the table looking concerned.

"Link, you know, if you don't want to do this… you can tell your dad to find someone else."

Oh Din, yes please. It was so tempting to just throw his arms up and walk away from this whole mess. Anyone but him could have done a better job.

He ran a bakery with all of three full-time employees in a rent-controlled unit with an extremely small kitchen and he just barely broke even every month.

The problem was, it wasn't just anyone else that his father needed to be there. It was Link.

And if there was one problem that Link could understand this mess, it was that Dragmire was slowly but surely strangling his father's company. Fixing that would be… it would be a start to cleaning up this mess.

But how to fix it?

Link's shoulders sagged and his gaze drifted to the window, looking out over the city from the high-rise corner office he'd inherited. After a moment he shook his head and reached for another one of the many papers littering the table, looking for answers he already knew weren't there.

"No, it's fine. I owe him this much, at least." He blew his bangs from his eyes to distract himself, making a mental note to get to the barber at some point in the next week. "So, back to business—what do we want to do about these tax expenditures?"

He didn't really know what the hell he was talking about or what good it would do, but it was something.

"Link." This time he was the one to raise his brows as he looked up at Malon. "What about your bakery? That's your dream. I mean that was, you know, the plan."

The plan. Ah yes, the glorious plan. Start small, a little bakery. Get a following. Buy up an old, glorious library or church and convert into a café with bookshelves for walls and hot coffee 24/7 with a house built in upstairs for him to live in a nice farm waiting for him out in the countryside.

The plan.

Link looked back at the paper in front of him. It didn't seem like much of a plan anymore. Distractedly Link picked up a random sheet of paper and started skimming it over.

Gibberish. No use.

"It'll be fine. The staff can manage without me full time." Maybe if he kept saying it he would start believing it.

He could, conceivably, wake up at four in the morning every day for the rest of his life to pre-cook and pre-bake and pre-make every item on the menu of his bakery and make sure the coffee beans were roasted just right and clean off the menus and welcome his first morning customers and then head off to work from 8-6 in the office and be a businessman.

Conceivably. He did consider himself to be one of the closest things to the legendary Link in the storybooks that he had been named for. They had the name in common. And other things. Like getting caught up with pretty girls named Zelda.

Maybe they shared the same superhuman ability to overcome great odds.

Hah. Wouldn't that be something.

"Wait. You're not closing it?"

What. Link looked up at Malon and saw that she was just as surprised to see him surprised as he was to hear the idea of closing his bakery.

"Close it? Why on earth would I close it?" Link looked at the redhead as if she had grown a third head. "Do you have any idea how many bets I'm on my way to winning at that place?"

"Well," Malon looked at him with an equally incredulous expression. "I guess that's a possibility. Keeping it I mean."

She looked like she believed it about as much as she believed that drinking a milkshake and eating a porterhouse would shrink her waistline.

Looking at her, Link's shoulders sagged and he sat back in his chair.

"I can't keep it." He said matter-of-factly, even as his face expressed a kind of despondent disbelief that was entirely incongruent with his flat tone. "Dragmire is on our ass. I can't run the bakery and this without losing them both."

"I wasn't going to say it." Malon said with a sugary smile that Link didn't appreciate in the least.

"Shut up, Malon." He glared (rather weakly) at the redhead. "You're not being helpful."

"Hey! I'm trying to be helpful here." Malon pouted.

"It's not working." Link said dryly, the corners of his lips lifting into a smile.

"It is!" Malon snorted indignantly, pointing straight at his face. "See, look, now you don't look like you're some sort of semi-conscious, disgruntled bear."

Link looked at her flatly over the top of some legal document he was pretending to understand. "Flattered. You're making me feel so much better about all of this."

The bakery owner promptly returned to staring at the document in his hand in such a way that suggested he was willing it to spontaneously combust.

The paper valiantly resisted his efforts. Goddamn paper.

Maybe the original Link could've done it. It wasn't fair that being named for the guy didn't give him the dude's powers. Maybe if he just kept practicing—

And he must've been looking like a semi-conscious and disgruntled bear again because when he looked up Malon was wringing her hands and opening and shutting her mouth like some kind of strange washmaid fish.

"Out with it."

"There's." Malon stopped, putting a hand over her mouth. "No. Link, I'm sorry."

"Malon." He was starting to get annoyed. And his head really hurt. "What?"

She caved like a house of cards.

"Zelda."

Link stared blankly at her, trying to think through the headache. It wasn't working.

"What." Zelda. Oh, Zelda.

He tried to block out the images flooding his mind before he got too distracted and was forced to hold a hand over his face to fight off the blush he knew was inevitably coming.

"Come on Malon, not now. This is business."

"No, Link." Malon was back to wringing her hands again. "Zelda. Zelda Harkinian. Zelda's a Harkinian."

"Malon, Zelda's a secretary I don't understand what a Hark—"

His mind still wasn't fully processing this information and even as he felt himself pushing away images of mostly-naked Zelda and Zelda blushing and trying to throw her snotty napkins at him and Zelda giving him endless grief about anything and everything, his heart stopped.

His brain caught up a moment later.

"Wait, she's a what?" And his heart starting beating again, furiously, almost pounding out of his chest. "Holy shit. Holy. Holy."

His eyes fell back to the mountain of papers amassed on the conference table, the countless pages and lines of red ink, and stacks of employee files all of which amounted to an enormous hole that he couldn't dig himself out of. Dragmire. Oh goddesses, Dragmire. What wouldn't the Harkinians do to remove a man like Dragmire from power? Dragmire had been at odds with the Harkinians since the birth of Dragmire Defense Industries an entire decade ago. Their rivalry was something of a Wall Street drama.

He saw his father's face, worn and tired. The man who had adopted him from the Kokiri Home for Lost Children when he was already six years old, much older and bigger than all the kids around him. The man who had chosen him to save when he'd already heard the whispers that he was a lost cause.

And then he felt the cautious start of optimism, a solution, a way out and for a second he dared to dream. Some when-you-wish-upon-a-star bullshit because this girl he couldn't quite shake suddenly represented more than a pretty face and a sharp tongue and the most breathtaking smile he'd ever seen.

Hope. Hope. Goddesses, a Harkinian.

"Well… that explains a lot." Link said without really thinking, his mind spinning in a hundred different directions all at once.

Veritable royalty, a member of a clan that more or less owned half of Hyrule and well damn, at least that explained her attitude and her abundance of clothes and high heels and…

"Well, don't go telling her that." Malon responded, smiling reflexing and looking considerably less enthusiastic than Link felt. "She likes to think she's pretty down-to-earth."

"A Harkinian. Are you serious? You know what this means?" Link said, grinning ear to ear and holding up some news clipping of Gannon Dragmire smirking at some golf tournament or another. "Problem solved."

"Link." Malon sobered, her smile fading to just a slight curl of the lips that looked more grimace than smile.

And why on earth would a Harkinian be a secretary living in a shitty apartment complex where he'd only chosen to live because the rent was so damn low that it made the crime rate worth it?

She had only said his name, but he heard the message loud and clear and it confirmed what he was just beginning to suspect.

"Oh, shit." His enthusiasm extinguished itself.

"It might not exactly be a problem-solved kind of thing."

"How long has she been all on her—?" Malon cut him off.

"About two months."

"Her choice or theirs?"

"Hers."

"Clean break?" Link asked hopefully.

"This is Zelda we're talking about here." Malon snorted and rolled her eyes.

"So no then."

Malon nodded.

Link sat back in his chair and exhaled deeply, running his hands over his face.

"I can't ask her then." Link said, looking to Malon for confirmation. "I mean, it's an option but it's kind of off the table."

"She's my best friend Link, I'm not going to lie and tell you and it's gonna work out just fine. It's a lot to ask her and she's not going to like it."

"But…" Link looked like a little kid pressed up outside of a candy shop. "It's Valentine's Day. So—"

"I wouldn't. Especially because it's Valentine's Day."

"You're right." Link looked defeated. "But even if I wait it's just going to—"

"—seem like you've been getting close to her cause she's a Harkinian and you need her connections?"

"…well, I wasn't going to say it like that."

"That's how she's going to see it." Malon said without any remorse. "I mean, you guys can figure out whatever it is you're doing but…"

"Is it even worth it?" Link asked abruptly.

Malon did a double-take. "Wait—what?"

"Zelda. We've barely just met." Link looked at the papers scattered around him and tried not to think of Zelda. "What does it matter 'whatever-it-is-we're-doing'? This company needs this. My dad needs this."

"So, screw it all, you've gotta do what you've gotta do?"

"Something like that."

"Link?"

"What?"

"I don't think I believe you." Malon grinned her Cheshire Cat grin.

"What is that supposed to mean?" Link frowned, puzzling over Malon's creepy smile. "You don't—"

"I genuinely don't believe you." Malon shrugged, still smiling ear to ear despite their rather dire circumstances. "I just don't think you're the type of person who would do that."

"Well it's not like I want to." Link was trying not to be frustrated with Malon. He really was. It just wasn't working. "But I just don't really see many other options and frankly if it comes down to some girl and my father then my father is more important to me than—"

"Of course." Malon said indulgently. "You're Link, after all. The noble, dashing, beat-the-odds, save the day hero type."

"Are you…" Link furrowed his brow and narrowed his eyes at the redhead, puzzling over her shift in attitude. "Malon Lon, are you thinking about the future of this company as some kind of weird psychoanalytical test?"

A/N: But all of Malon's nonsense aside—go re-read the past two chapters with this in mind. Updates might start slowing down again, but I'm planning on having another chapter out by next Friday! And if you're finding yourself confused by Zelda's estrangement and the fact that Link and Malon seem to understand it but give you next to no information about it-well, that's intentional. That's something you get to learn about in later chapters, but until then all that's important are the little snapshots of information Link and Malon have mentioned. I'll leave you guys to puzzle that out for a while. ;)

What will Zelda's next move be? Is the bakery really closing? Would Link really put his dad's company above Zelda? Would he be insane not to? And how does Malon manage to squirrel out of anything regarding her own personal life? Until next time my readers! Love, me.