Wow. Another fanfic completed. And I just finished my other one too!

I hope you all enjoyed the ride. It was a crazy journey, although fun to write (and hopefully to read!). I got to bring together all of the characters scattered across the Zelda games. A few of my ideas never made it, but I got the most important ones in. A lot of the story was completely improvised , but that was cool too. It seemed to work unusually well for this fanfic.

I think I'll go back and fix up my Midna fanfic now. I'm really unsatisfied with the battle scenes. Come check it out!

Chapter 31: Splitting Paths

"Stop treating me like an invalid! I'm fine, and I don't need to be carried everywhere!"

"At least she's feeling better," Link said quietly, grinning at Navi.

Navi laughed and nodded in agreement. "No one who's feeling too bad can be that loud. I'll go tell Midna that she's doing okay." She sped offover the rows of tents that made up their camp. Now that the battle was over, they were once again in the Twilight realm, letting everyone recover before they returned to their own homes and times.

Link peeked into the tent where Nabeen was sitting on the edge of a cot. Though her face showed no sign of weakness, her arm was in a sling. Link wondered if she would be able to use her arm again. The cut could have easily cut the nerves through her shoulder. The fairies had done their best to fix it, but there had been so many injuries that most of their healing magic had been worn out before the end of the battle. At least they'd managed to save Nabeen's life.

It had been the same with Link. They'd healed the worst of his injuries, but he was still covered with several cuts and bruises. He'd had a pretty fierce headache from when Ganon hit him, not to mention a pretty impressive bruise. But a few days later, that was starting to clear up as well.

Nabeen slowly rose up to her feet and balanced there uncertainly for a moment. The Twili girl who had been tending her fidgeted nervously, but didn't want to get shouted at again by her patient. Link stepped into the tent.

"You should be careful walking," he suggested.

"Oh, zip it," she said, taking an experimental step.

Link watched with a raised eyebrow. "Where do you plan to go anyway?"

"Out of this tiny tent," she replied, keeping her eyes glued to the ground in an attempt to keep balance.

"Sheik's feeling better," Link explained. "Well, actually, he's not Sheik anymore. With the battle over, Sheik turned into Princess Zelda again."

"I'll have to get you to explain how that works," Nabeen scoffed.

"Don't ask me," Link said, holding up his hands and grinning. "Do you want to come and see everyone?"

"What do you mean, everyone?" she demanded. "I only know a couple of the people here."

"You said you wanted to get out." Link shrugged. "I thought you'd like to visit some people."

Nabeen looked up at him, and for once, she didn't make a scathing remark. "Maybe later. I just wanted to… to test my strength."

Nabeen looked down at her bandaged shoulder and the arm hanging limp in the sling. She took a deep breath and put out her good arm to steady herself against the table. From the look on her face, Link thought he understood what had just happened. She couldn't feel her arm.

"You'll be fine," Link assured her.

"Did anyone die that we know?" Nabeen asked, sitting back down on the bed and regaining her matter-of-fact attitude.

Link glanced off to the side. "Too many people died. But as for someone you might know? Well, I guess Shadow Link doesn't count, huh?" He glanced down at his shadow, which gave a slight shrugging motion in reply. "But… we did lose one person from our group. Although… I'd thought he was dead to begin with."

"Who?" Nabeen asked.

"Volvagia," Link replied. He looked down at his hand and absently flexed his fingers. "You know how the two dragons brought a lot of the injured people off the battlefield? Well, the enemy tried to ambush the infirmary. He was trying to defend the place when it happened."

"A brave soul," Nabeen said, nodding. "A brave dragon. He'll be well remembered."

"Pretty much everyone else got badly beat up," Link continued in an attempt to change the topic. "Let's see. Of the six sages, Darunia, Impa, and Nabooru were pretty battered, but they're okay. Saria and Ruto weren't too bad off. Skull Kid made it out fine. Vaati was pretty beat up. " Link ticked off on his fingers as he counted through the people he knew. "Medli was fine. She, Nayru, Din, and Farore headed to the infirmary to help out rather than take part in the battle, so they escaped the worse. Ralph and Midna got it pretty bad, but they're doing okay. Epona's doing better. And Valoo was in bad shape, but he's being treated."

"Is that all?" Nabeen asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Well, no, but that's the main news. I don't want to keep going on, but I've been trying to follow how everyone's doing. Since I heard you'd woken up, I thought I'd come over to tell you what's been going on."

"Yes. I heard you killed Ganon. Good job. I wish I could have been more help."

"You did help. A lot."

"I'm flattered," she muttered. "But I still got it pretty bad." She half-heartedly indicated her injured arm.

"I took a few bad hits too," Link said, flinching.

"Yes," Nabeen said flatly.

Link gave a half smile before continuing. "Do you know what's really realllyyy strange?" he asked.

"You mean besides boys turning into wolves and little girls riding vacuum cleaners?"

"Uh, yes. Besides that. It's when I'm walking through the camp, and someone walks by that looks exactly like me, or just like me when I was younger. There's a lot of… Links around. And Zeldas too.

"It would be strange to have several clones walking around, yes."

Link smiled. "Well, I hope you feel better soon. The, uh, Prince of Hyrule and the… heroine wanted to come and visit you, since you're all from the same time. If you want, I can tell them to come in."

"Visitors," Nabeen sighed, exasperated. "Well, if they must."

"Everyone's going to be heading home soon," Link added as he stepped towards the exit. " So, I mainly wanted to say thank you, in case I didn't get another chance too."

She raised a hand in farewell as Link stepped outside. As he dropped the flap behind him, he heard a soft "thanks" from inside. He smiled and went to speak with his female counterpart and the prince.

…

With the passage of a few more days, preparations were finally complete and everyone was ready to go home. It was strange to think that in just a few hours, Link would leave all of these people behind and return to his old life.

He stood at the fence to the corral, stroking Epona's nose. Though she still limped, her leg was almost healed.

"I almost don't want to go home," he admitted. "I've met so many people that I'll never see again."

"At least you'll always remember them, right?"

Link jumped and turned around. The Rito girl, Medli, was walking towards him.

"Sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to eavesdrop. It's kind of funny. I didn't really get to know you very well. But I did spend a lot of time with… him." She pointed down at Link's shadow.

Link laughed. "I'll bet he was a handful, huh?"

Medli smiled. "I suppose. He did cause a lot of trouble, but-" She suddenly let out a shriek and jumped into the air. She flapped her wings several times, hovering a few feet above the ground.

"What?" Link asked startled.

"Something just grabbed my ankle!"

Medli landed a short distance away, and together the two of them looked down at the ground. There was nothing there except Link's shadow, which gave every appearance of smirking in amusement.

"Oh, sure," Link said in mock exhasperation, "I give you a little freedom, and you think you can come out any time you feel like it?"

Medli laughed. "Well, you see what I mean, at least. But we couldn't have done it without him. "

"You're right. We owe him a lot. And he's never gonna let me live it down."

The two of them laughed.

"It's hard to believe that we'll be going home in a few hours," Medli sighed at last. "There's so many great people here! And some pretty strange ones too. It's just so strange to think that some of live hundreds of years apart from each other. Under normal circumstances, we never would have met."

"You can say that again! Come on. Let's go meet the others." He took Epona's lead rope and started guiding her slowly along. The three of them headed towards the clearing where everyone was waiting, ready to go home at last.