A Zelda: Twilight Princess collection
Disclaimer: I don't own TP (except a copy of it), and I don't own Zelda.
Chapter Four: Beautiful
'The die has been cast – An irrevocable choice has been made.'
She was so beautiful.
Crouched before him, Zelda held softly to one of Midna's hands, a small, serene smile gracing her face. Midna ascended through the air above them, gently borne upon a billow of wind, her eye wide with a nebulous fear that sluiced at Link's untamed, wolfish heart. Any resentment, any dislike—not hate, never hate—he might have drizzled upon the imp before had shriveled up and died in his chest in the rain, hard droplets driving, bruising against his furry flanks merely hours before. She had been dying, then; she was dying now.
Had been dying. Whatever it was the princess was doing now drove the death knell clanging in her ears and eyes from her, resonating through the room and his quivering frame. Even as Midna was carried up, up, with nothing to support her limited freefall to the ground her hand slipped from the princess'; eyes wide and mouth slashed in a gape, a demand for him to stop her dancing silver fire across her tongue. The strain of pushing, pushing against the Light flowing through her veins, weaving a shield, to shove it back forcibly into Zelda's body.
Link didn't move. Perhaps it was because he couldn't move; arrested he stood, eyes locked firmly on Midna's. Even as, in the corner of his gaze, he saw and felt wavering Light magic crackling across his skin; her disappearing into nothingness beyond nothing. He had to stand firm. Indecision had always been the fall of him, the bruise and the scrape of failure. He could not fail now; would not. He had promised. He was chained by that promise; and even the loss of his princess, the ruler of his country—by however bare a mark and thread—could not mire him in double-guessing and self-doubt. Perhaps he should have felt more when she simply vanished, but nothing crossed his mind except relief that Midna was all right. A seething unease settled in the very deepest depths of his belly. He ignored it, or simply didn't acknowledge it.
Midna floated down stolidly to join him, feet hardly brushing the floor. Her head down, weighed upon heavily by the ancient crown cresting atop her fire-blaze hair, she only briefly managed to meet his gaze.
"Let's go, Link."
He had never thought about her appearance before, the image pasted across his eyelids whenever he thought of her. Ideally she wasn't a beauty; her malformed, impish features prevented her from being called anything even approaching plain, but at that moment, when the light had faded and she regarded him with as bare an expression as he had ever seen grace her face, a small part of his mind took a path of its own. She was so beautiful.
'The die has been cast.'
A/N: I don't really have any idea where this came from. I was re-reading a really sad story, true, but that doesn't explain how this sprouted and took root. Much less that I didn't mind writing it. I'm not good at romance on any level, and I'm mildly uncomfortable with this one. Still, I felt I should post it, if only because so many of my TP readers would like to see them go beyond close friendship in my works. I would do so more often, but this is about as fluffy as my abilities reach. Like I said, it makes me mildly uncomfortable, so really, don't expect a lot of fluff in the future. I think I've about worn out my store.