A Zelda: Twilight Princess collection
Disclaimer: I don't own TP (except a copy of it), and I don't own Zelda.
Chapter Five: Dead
'Absent without leave – Absent without permission.'
Midna was dead.
The soft whispers of silk against skin were the only noises throughout the whole room. Despite the many people around the room, formal robes glittering with thread-of-gold in the candlelight, it was utterly silent. It shook the vaulted chamber with its loudness.
"Allow me to be the first to formally welcome you home, Princess."
"…"
"I am sure we are all eager to know what kept Her Majesty from us for so long. Would you deign to relieve our minds, Princess?"
Silence still clogged her throat, her chest heaved against the constraints of her garb. The fire-red locks bonded upon her collarbone shook with her rattling breaths.
The slimy, almost imperceptible grin on the Chief Counselor's visage was conniving at best; though to all else it would be the picture of aggrieved concern. She wasn't fooled.
"My Princess, there is much for us to discuss, and not much time to do so." Someone else, now: the third cousin of the Counselor, a Noble of a smaller House, but still powerful enough to tip the tide in his favor—against her's.
Muttering spread through the assembled Council at her continued muteness, and the Chief frowned fiercely under his accommodating smile. Thread-of-gold more prominent in his ceremonial robes than in all others save her's, the bells dangling at the fringe of his cuffs jingled as he brought his long, spidery hands before him in the appearance of appeasement. His narrowed, angular eyes—Twilight, she couldn't look at him without thinking of that bastard usurper Zant—found hers and remained there, unwavering. Was she the only one who could see his insolence?
"Princess, you have been gone near a year. We must know what occurred to tear you from us. It is against our laws for the ruler to vanish on her own without ample warning."
As suddenly as the subservience was there it was gone in a flash. The Chief drew himself up with icy dignity, the splendor of his garments carrying more weight than his words with the Council. "If we are not presented with enough evidence of Her Majesty's innocence then we have no choice but to ask she step down."
"Come now," She said finally, her patience, already short, nearing its end. She could ignore everything else, but not the threat to evict her from her own realm, her own kingdom. What she had gone through to save these people—! "Surely my disappearance doesn't allot enough ground to see to what you are suggesting, Holok."
Holok sneered openly now, a gleam of satisfaction in his eyes. She didn't understand. She had said nothing incriminating, and had, in fact, pointed out the flaw in his plan. Her skin suddenly, inexplicably crawled.
"Under the law written and approved under King Derolnos and the High Council five hundred seventy-three years after the Exile, all members of the ruling family are confined to the Royal Grounds and Palace without an escort of thirty-three or more of the Guards. A sudden disappearance made on the part of any member of the ruling family for a period longer than a month under stressed circumstances is automatically convicted of abandonment of state, position, heredity, and equal treatment under the law."
He grinned as he finished, fangs flashing in the glow of the candles floating around the chamber. He hadn't even needed to look at the heavy, leather-bound volume on the dais two feet to his right. She wouldn't put it past him to have memorized the entire thing.
"I had reasons," She countered coldly, refusing to sit up fully. She would not allow him to see her nervousness, her uncertainty. Such a thing would be as a death knell to her credibility before the Council.
The muttering grew louder, and more of the Council sitters were looking directly at her now, measuring and dissecting with their gazes. How ever had she managed to deal with them before she had been forced to leave? She had little more patience now than she had then.
"Reasons, Princess? If you are referring to the minor issue with the court jester, then allow me to reassure you, that was held under perfect control. He posed no threat." His grin was no longer a grin, but a bearing of teeth in a vague form of challenge.
She, for her part, goggled at him in disbelief before catching herself. No threat? The only thing more threatening had been Ganondorf himself. "Surely you cannot be serious. He managed to usurp me and seize control of the kingdom before he could be stopped."
She realized the stupidity of what she had said moments after she said it, but it could not be retracted now. Triumph was as a shadow in Holok's eyes.
"Ah, yes, that is right, isn't it? Our dear Princess overpowered by her court jester, and her authority taken from her before a Light-dweller could save her. And then, she vanished for twelve months without a word of where she was or what she was doing to see the court jester taken into custody."
Her temper flared, and before she could blink found herself on her feet. Despite her towering height Holok would have overtopped her if it weren't for the dais her throne sat upon. "And where were you? Where were you all, when our world was threatened? You sat back and twiddled your thumbs, did you not, waiting for me to come back and save your sorry asses instead of saving yourself!"
Maybe she had thought that would pull some onto her side, but most simply viewed her with disgusted and affronted expressions. Holok's hadn't changed. "Where were you?" She demanded again, attempting calm.
"It is not the responsibility of the Council to see to the protection of one ruler from another," Holok said. "The business of House rivalry is none of ours. We simply see to the order of the realm while Her Majesty sees to more important matters."
More important matters my right foot, She thought bitterly. There was more rivalry between members of the Council than there was between the participants of the most ugly Blood Feud in the Twilight!
She hadn't realized it, deep in her thoughts as she was, when four Guards shadowed her from behind. Holok's grin grew sickly sweet.
"Until such reasons are given, I am afraid we must take Her Majesty into custody, for her own safety. Rebellions can be all too common when the people are slighted by their Princess."
She snarled as they seized her arms, and would have struck back if she didn't feel the bonds sliding between her and her magic, constricting her wrists in blazing, sizzling yellow bracers behind her back. She bared her teeth at Holok.
"This is madness. Madness! What authority is yours to do this?!"
"Why, Princess," He said simply, "None."
"Then why?"
"The people demand it."
She was stunned. They took her away, through a side door reserved for servants. It was terribly cramped, but not as cramped as the cell they threw her into; bonds still in place upon her person. She could have wept nails sooner than reach the magic shielded from her.
She was furious. She was maddeningly enraged. But more than that, more than both sensations together she was afraid, terrified. There was never a ruler who was taken into custody who was given a light sentence. Never.
And as she lay there, seething, frothing over how to possibly exact vengeance on the fools who dared do this to her, a sickening revelation struck her.
Midna was dead. The arrogant but strong-willed woman she had been at the end of her venture into the Light had vanished somewhere between her return to the Twilight and being thrown into this cell; no amount of planning would allow her the chance to do as she wished. The bonds would hold. But worse than that, than all those realizations was another.
She had grown dependent. She had grown dependent upon the accursed farm boy, the Hero, her Hero, her wolf; the woman named Midna was dead. Gone. And in her place, in a dark cell in the depths of the Twilight Palace was a fallen Princess as helpless as those in all those damned fairytales, awaiting her Hero to free her from her captivity.
'Absent without leave.'
A/N: There. Another update so quickly? Aw, well, I wanted to write this. Not much to say, other than enjoy it. And if you catch the doube meaning behind "Absent without leave" then Kudos to you.