A/N: The last one was Ganondorf's…this one is Link's. I'm guessing that you all can guess the game universe yourselves, context clues and all. Enjoy!

There is something in my head, and I think I created it myself.

Which wouldn't be such a horrible thing if it didn't involve an obsessive image of someone I've met barely as many times as there are fingers on my hand.

Perhaps if that wasn't the case, I wouldn't be so troubled… if I had gotten to know her better, I wouldn't be able to recognize how strange we are to each other.

We are strange because we are familiar. And the image is her laughter.

I have never seen Princess Zelda laugh. Truly, I have barely seen a smile cross her lips.

These are facts…but they mean nothing to the persistent picture in my head—where her face is free and her head is tipped back and she is letting out a sweet, musical sound that lifts my heart.

It is her—it looks mostly like her. But there are differences: her hair is lighter, face a trifle rounder, her beauty makes me more joyous than it does breathless (the first time the Princess pulled off her hood, I heard Midna sigh, but somehow I couldn't find it in me to feel as awkward and stupid as I was supposed to feel…I didn't feel ashamed). When I see the Princess, there is no doubt that she is my monarch, every inch a Queen.

The Zelda of my mind…is not a queen. She is something wonderful, but I do not know what she is meant to be.

But all of these things are inconsequential, because I know just like the sky is blue, that I have never seen Princess Zelda laugh.

There has been no reason to laugh, not for a very long time. And if not for this time of darkness, I would have never even met the Princess, let alone witnessed her in such a free moment.

The first time I laid eyes on her did not feel like the first time, at least like I had imagined. She is the Princess of our land, for goddesses' sake. The very idea of me meeting the Princess of Hyrule had reduced Ilia to such giggles that she couldn't speak for minutes. I am not dignified or noble. I have barely a thing to my name and the only life I knew back then was animals—tending to them and calming them. That is part of the reason Ilia and I got on so well. We shared that.

But then I picked up a true sword. And other things began to filter in; there were things that I could do and that I knew, which I had never imagined myself capable. It wasn't a natural ability (though Rusl often had kind words for me when he instructed my swordplay). There was something there that I couldn't measure or describe…but whatever it was, it kept me alive. And it was awakened.

I'm sure that many would dismiss it as a kind of an animal instinct (I was an animal, after all), but it transcended that. It couldn't create this sense of being what I wasn't or doing things that I couldn't. It wouldn't have made me a man that Ilia could hardly recognize. But the loss and the devastation that my heart now owned were things I could only share with two women: Midna and Zelda. And when I realized that I felt at-home when I was at war, I knew I couldn't linger in Ordon. And Midna was gone…

So, I can't go back. I just don't know how. But whatever it was that saved Hyrule, and Midna, and Princess Zelda, and my own life is the same thing that convinces me that I have seen Zelda's laughter. It makes me restless, and it needles at me until I have no choice but to search until I find it.

But I don't know where to start. I never have.