Hi guys. Thanks to those who are reading this... This is my favorite chapter that I've written so far, so I hope you like it, too.
Reviews are much appreciated.
Should probably also add as part of my disclaimer: While this is LoZ, the "Dusk Stone" I referred to in chapter one and will refer to in future chapters is actually the property of Pokemon, though it doesn't serve the same purpose, obviously.
Have fun?

Etana sat propped up on one of the sterile, white beds of the medical ward, looking dumbfounded at where she had been taken. The scratchy blankets covered half of her legs while one of the older nurses held an icepack to her throbbing head. On the other side of the room, Ivan and Drury stood with another attendant, explaining exactly what had happened to the poor girl.

"She seemed fine right after, but the things she said a minute or so after weren't making sense," finished Ivan, who occasionally took quick glances over at the patient to assure that she was still conscious and faring well. He was getting antsy, as evident by the incessant strumming of his fingers on his thigh. Drury, however, kept close observation on his friend, and caught every glance that he took at the girl.

"You hit your head, too?" the nurse asked as she checked his pupils.

"Yes, but I'm fine. We need to worry about-"

"You say that you're fine now," she interrupted with a matter-of-fact tone, "but that's what Miss Plamen contested before she started suffering symptoms." Ivan furrowed his brow at the middle-aged woman, frustrated at what he knew she was about to say. "We need you to stay here overnight."

"Just stay," Drury persuaded, knowing that his friend was ready to argue. "If anything big happens – which is unlikely – we'll come get you." Ivan looked back over at Etana, who seemed to be having a conversation with her nurse about what had happened. He nodded in compliance and allowed himself to be taken to a bed adjacent to hers. The boy felt completely fine, but figured that this was an opportunity to watch over her and free his guilty conscious of what he had done.

Ivan sat down on the bed next to Etana's, which, like hers, had scratchy covers and thin pillows, and swung his legs atop them, leaning back against the wall. He shifted uncomfortably as he stole another peek at the girl, and got caught. Ashamedly, he averted his eyes to look down at his feet.

"I-Ivan?" she asked, unsure, when her nurse walked away. Looking back up at her, he was finally able to assess the damage; her head was wrapped in gauze that had blood stains on the back, a deep cut on her cheek that had yet to form a scab, and from what he could see of her legs, partly covered by the blankets and her hospital gown, she was scraped and scratched badly.

"I'm so sorry," he confessed, holding his head in his hands. "It will never happen again." He shook his head and looked back at her. "I promise."

"What happened?" Etana asked with a voice as innocent as a child's, which stabbed the guilt deeper into Ivan's conscience. "I remember archery, and then…" she trailed off and remained silent for a moment. "I can't remember…"

"I let my pride take over," the boy confessed as he hung his legs over the side of the bed to face her. "I did this to you." Etana stared intently at his face, trying to recall exactly what had happened. "You won the fight, but I kept going. I'm so sorry," he apologized again, looking into her eyes as a way to beg for forgiveness. Ivan then looked over all of her battle-wounds again, studying and memorizing them. "I didn't mean to…" and he, too, trailed off.

The girl showed him a light smile. "It's ok. I forgive you." The smile pushed on the cut on her cheek - which was probably from when her head and face got thrown against the pillar – causing it to sting slightly, and the smile went back down.

"No, please," he said, shaking his head again. "Don't let me off that easily."

"But I am," she replied tenderly, smiling with the undamaged side of her face.

"Here's a way to make it up," suggested the older nurse as she approached them, staring at her clipboard. "Keep her awake until dawn. She mustn't sleep." She looked over at Ivan. "Both of you."

"I can't sleep?" Etana asked, confused and with a hint of disappointment in her voice. "But it's so late…"

"If you don't wake up, your concussions will turn into comas. Now, it's only a few hours to dawn. I'm sure you can make it through until then." Putting her clipboard down on the bed, she took out a pill bottle from her apron, emptied two small, round, red pills into her hand, and handed them to Ivan. "Take these. I'll see you in the morning," she said before she walked away and out the doors. As he watched her, the boy realized that at some point, Drury must have left, too.

"Those are for pain," Etana said, observing the pills in Ivan's hand. "Or, at least, that's what I was told when I took them." He stared at them in his palm momentarily, then threw them aside.

"I don't need them."

The girl, barely noticing that he didn't take them, yawned with half-opened eyes and shifted down on her bed to lie in a more comfortable position. "These lights are so bright," she groaned, and covered her eyes with her arm.

"No, Etana. Come on, stay with me, now," Ivan urged as he reached over and shook her bed slightly. Etana put her arm back and looked at him groggily.

"She's gone. Just wake me up before dawn and I'll say I was up the whole time."

"I'm not risking you going into a coma," he said sternly in an attempt to keep her awake.

"Ugh…" Etana rolled her eyes and sat back up in her bed. "Entertain me, then."

Ivan looked back at her, confused. "Would you… like a story?"

"Fine," she shrugged. "Just keep it interesting."

Ivan racked his brain for a story to tell the girl to keep her awake. He recalled many that his mother used to tell him when he was a small boy, but they were all bedtime stories. He considered making one up on the spot, but couldn't think of any, and, honestly, wasn't any good at improvisation.

"I…I think I've got one," he told her, thinking it over.

"Go on, then," she urged, rubbing her tired eyes.

"Alright. Once upon a time," he began, "there was a little Hylian boy in Kondo. Every day, he would walk in Kondo Castle Town with his mother and his little sister, and he would see the Kondian soldiers marching about, and he vowed that one day he would become one of them. Then-"

"What was his name?" Etana cut in with a knowing smile.

Ivan let out a slight chuckle. "It seems you already have the answer to that question."

The girl giggled back. "Just clearing that up. So, then what?"

"Then," he continued, "he went through training and graduated head of his class. He became the captain of his squadron."

"Well, good for you," she commented with a wink.

"Why, thank you," Ivan responded, standing up and taking a formal bow to the girl, who giggled again. The smile remained on her face, through the pain from the cut on her cheek. "The captain was unmatched in skill with his blade-" he began pantomiming fighting with an invisible sword, performing various slices and attacks with such intensity that Etana could only giggle and watch with wonder. "-and slayed enemies by the thousands!" The boy finished his show of finesse with a brutal stab through the air.

"Thousands?" the girl asked skeptically, raising her eyebrows and trying to hold in a chortle.

"Yes, thousands!" he refuted as he aimed his invisible blade skyward, causing Etana to again roll her eyes. "And then, one fateful battle, his general gave him orders to sneak into position behind the enemy's army, hoping that he would be able to take out their catapults in the back and surround them if they retreated. But, on the way there, he saw something he hoped to never see…" Ivan paused dramatically.

"What was it?" Etana asked, her widened blue eyes genuinely curious.

"It…" he exhaled sharply and trailed off.

"Ivan, you don't have to tell it if you don't want to."

"No, you should probably know. I'm actually surprised Drury hasn't told you yet. He's still angry at me for it…"

"Drury doesn't speak to me outside of training, let alone tell me your life story."

"Yeah, well… he's a good friend," Ivan commented, a hint of a smile appearing on his sorrowful face.

"Well, if I should know… what happened?" Etana asked him, her head tilted slightly in both empathy and curiosity.

"It was… the captain's little sister," he continued, almost inaudibly. "She had – unknown to him – followed her brother into the Kondian army. She was a soldier on the front lines." Etana remained speechless, and Ivan drew in a deep breath, sitting back down on her bed. "As strong as she was, I couldn't help but worry about her. I was completely torn between my duties as captain and my duties as an older brother." He took in another breath, shakier this time. "I watched her burn alive as one of their flaming catapults hit her. I was right next to her, and all I could do was watch." Etana stared concernedly into the boys eyes, trying to find some hint that this tragedy was a joke, but he stared down at his knees. As she blinked, she saw what he saw, the scene of watching a loved one being burned and tortured through their demise, and lost her breath.

"Oh, Ivan, I-"

"Sometimes, I wonder," Ivan cut her off. "I wonder if I had done what I was told and took out those weapons, if she would be here still."

Etana swallowed hard, not sure what to say. She was taken aback by such a devastating story, and felt so badly that there was nothing that she could do about it. There was nothing she could say that wouldn't sound absolutely pathetic. So, instead she reached over and held the hand of the poor boy, who now hung his head and hid his face with his other hand.

"I thought I was ready to tell that story…" Ivan confessed, taking Etana's hand for comfort.

Feeling the need to say at least something, she replied, "You did what you thought was right. How would you have felt if that happened and you weren't there with her?" He brought his head up to look at her. "You did all that you could have. Don't regret."

Ivan stared down at the hand that he was holding. "When did the vengeful hothead become a consoling wiseman?" he asked, a slight smile creeping across his mouth.

"What? I'm a jack of all trades," she bantered, hoping to get a bigger smile out of him.

"That must be one bad head injury…" Ivan countered with a smirk.

"You want one just like it?" Etana asked jokingly with a threatening fist held in front of her face. The boy only held his grin – and her hand – and stared at her. "What?" she asked, staring back.

"Oh, nothing," he replied. "You're just… interesting."

"Is this your way of asking for my life story now? Here," she started, sitting up completely on the medical bed and let go of his hand to cross her arms over her chest. "Once upon a time, I was born, and then I hit my head, and here I am. The end."

Ivan rose from his bed and sat next to Etana on hers. "You don't have to tell me. I just thought it might pass the time." As Etana looked out the window across from the bed to check when dawn would break, Ivan stared at her hand, which was placed on the white sheets to hold herself up across from him. Hesitantly, he reached toward her, stopped, and pulled back, all before she could look back at him.

"You already guessed my story when I was in the cell, anyway. What more do you want to know?" she asked, her smile now faded.

"Whatever you're willing to tell me."

"Okay, then," Etana began. "I was born while the Uprising was beginning to take place, when the band of Hylians was plotting to take the Triforce along with the Sacred Realm. I grew up with everyone around me learning magic." She closed her eyes and opened them again. "Dark magic. My uncle, one of the Supreme Interlopers, pushed me into learning it, too, against my parents' wishes. When they protested against the entire secret regime to protect me, they were killed."

Ivan reached out to touch the girl's hand, stroking it gently. "That's terrible."

"I didn't know them very well, for I was still quite young. One of the older agents told me this much." Etana, not yet grieving, allowed Ivan to rub her hand. He was warm, and the autumn night was beginning to chill her fingers and toes.

"Then," she continued, "my uncle tried training me day and night to use some sort of magic, but I just couldn't. No matter how hard I tried, magic did not flow through me. It was impossible. So, when he would get frustrated enough to leave me alone, I would train in physical combat. I eventually secluded myself from the other magic-wielders, and became an outcast. When my uncle finally sent me on this mission, I thought he had trusted in my combat skills." Etana licked her lips and shook her head slightly, disapprovingly. "Now I know that he wanted the same fate for me as my parents." Ivan stared at her, trying to find some hint of mourning or anger. There was nothing. "The end."

"No, not 'the end,'" he told her, squeezing her cold hand. "Then, you became an incredible warrior to fight back, to show them that you really do have power." He smiled at her. "That you have strength."

"How much strength?" she asked with an innocent grin, not believing what he had just told her.

"Enough strength…" Ivan threw his fist in the air. "…to slay a thousand men!"

Etana began to giggle. "A thousand?"

"Yes, a thousand!" he answered with the same exuberance as the first time he exclaimed it. The girl, still laughing, leaned back against her pillow and clutched her sore abdominals with her free hand. "Oh, Etana, don't hurt yourself," Ivan advised, giving her a worried look.

"It's fine, they've been sore for a few days," she replied reassuringly. "It's nothing new. But…" Etana closed her eyes and shivered under her covers, every disc in her spine shaking up and down. "…it's so cold." She opened her eyes again and looked out the window across from her bed, where the ground was blanketed in colorful leaves, and the branches on the trees were becoming bare against the bitter chill of autumn. "And I'm so tired." The girl began to feel internal pressure on her tear ducts, and her throat was closing up on her. "And I get cranky when I'm tired and I just want to go to bed and my mind is fried from everything going on and…" Two tears emerged from each of her eyes and rolled down her flushed cheeks, all the way down to her quivering lips, where they then disappeared. "Can I go to bed now?"

"Oh, poor overtired sweetheart," Ivan whispered as he held a warm hand to her cheek. Looking deep into her eyes and becoming entranced within them, he slowly leaned in toward her. The boy closed his eyes and lightly pressed his lips against hers, stopping the quivering immediately. He slid his hand that held Etana's up her arm, caressing her elbow, and then wrapping around her waist to pull her closer as he kissed her with increasing passion. Etana kissed him back, sharing the taste of saltwater that lingered on her lips from the tears, which ceased with the first kiss.

Pulling back, Ivan opened his eyes to stare back at the girl's. Hers half-opened out of exhaustion as she licked her lips to savor the taste of his, and fumbled, "Wha-what was that f-for?"

"Ssshhh…" he told Etana as he laid her down on the bed and pulled the blankets over her. When her head was rested on the pillow, he brushed her short, wavy blonde hair as far back as the bandage around her head would allow and kissed her forehead. "Sleep now."

"Don't go," she pleaded as her eyes closed completely, just as Ivan turned away. She opened her eyes one final time to see the boy lift the covers, causing a small breeze to chill her body briefly, and slip in bed with her. When she closed them for the final time, the last thing that she felt was the comforting warmth of his body against hers and his arms enclosing her completely, making her feel safe and at ease. They both slept peacefully.