"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love, and be loved in return."

-Moulin Rouge

Chapter 4

I decided, after consulting with the lone voice in the emptiness within me, that in my schemes to convince Link to help me I first had to establish who was boss, especially since I was dealing with a man. This meant I had to teach him that we would move at my time, my pace, and at my pleasure.

Though, of course, having no memories to back up this logic, I ended up just standing there at the foot of his god-forsaken tree house in the middle of the night like some sort of creep. I had moved all the way out here on the echo of a memory I didn't have, though even as I stared up at the flickering light in the window of the house, I had the faint affirmation that I had thought those thoughts once upon a time, to a situation probably more appropriate than this.

And since I had plenty of time to stand there stupidly and consider my next move, I also got to ponder how listening to a voice inside my head technically wasn't a good thing.

The sudden screaming inside decided it for me.

Without thinking, I swung myself up the latter, heart full of panic. I nearly kicked down the door in my haste—

To find a shirtless Link hunched over his lap, backlighted by a dying fire. I blinked and he was on his feet, a knife in his hand, shaggy blond head like the goats he cared for.

For a full thirty seconds, we stared at each other; he with a feral, beast like glower and me momentarily scared out of my wits.

Like I'd allow myself to stay like that.

"What. The. Hell! Put that knife away! Do I look like a monster to you? Din!"

His hackles dropped along with the knife. "M-Mid…no. You're that—"

"That girl who's come up here expecting a bloodbath and getting some half-naked teenager instead." I humphed and folded my arms to hide how my arms shook. All the while, the voice urged me on. This was good, I was establishing control on the situation. Just for sure measure, I cocked my chin up and kicked the door behind me—I reasoned it would show I wasn't afraid of him, closing off my exit. The next second later, I regretted that, because really, did I know a thing about fighting? And though I may be a bit taller than him (if I ever got down to comparing), he more than made up for it in sheer muscle.

…lots of muscle. No shirt…

"What were you doing out so late?" he asked, no longer wielding a knife, but his shoulders still hunched as though ready for a blow—or ready to deal one.

"Peeing. I hate the outhouses here."

"Sure." He puffed a sigh from his nostrils and straightened, measuring my pose. "Now that you know I'm not dying, you can leave."

The pansy, almost too-polite guy I had talked to during the day had vanished. A man stood before me now, skin taunt across muscles and rippling with scars. No sooner had I caught the white glow of one then I found another till I found myself forgetting about myself completely to stare in open bafflement.

"Goats did that to you?"

"You're technically breaking and entering," he said.

"I didn't break your door," I tip toe nearer, my bafflement growing to fascination. "You lived through these? All at once?"

"Please leave."

"I don't want to." And I didn't. For some reason, the frightening, haggard nighttime Link terrified me much less than his dressed, daylight version. This, I felt, I knew better, if I knew him at all. Which made me pause, blink, and remember the original purpose to why I had come. Trying to regain some composure, I brought myself back from standing dangerously within arms reach of him to the door, where I pulled out the sack I had brought. Not knowing how to start, I simply untied and poured out my massive braid of orange hair. He stared it as thought I had dropped a snake.

"I know it's not much," I said quickly. "But I want you to help me regain my memories. I'm sure you could sell this for quite a bit at the market for wigs or something. That girl says it's pretty as though it really means something, so I'm going off her word."

Something rippled across his face. As emotions wavered in and out of his gaze, a log snapped, giving out an extra burst of fire and light and I couldn't help but catch another thin, white line that I had missed before straight across his nose. How had I missed it before? Oh yeah, I had been averting my eyes from his sudden appearance in my life, baffled by the sensations he brought.

He was my reason.

And I intended to remember why.

His eyes found mine. "You broke into my house in the middle of the night to bargain over your hair?"

I was finding there was little more I hated more than the heat boiling from my gut and up to my neck and face. I hated this feeling—like I was somehow less for my ideas.

"I'd like to see you do something cleverer without your memories," I snarled. "You helped Ilia with her memory, and you're going to help me with mine."

He actually smirked. "Hmph. No."

I prickled. Since I didn't know how to deal with another dose of fear, I turned it to anger. "Excuse me?"

"I have plenty of money. There's nothing you can possibly give me, and I've had more than my fair share of adventuring."

"Adventuring, eh? Is that where you got those scars? Bet that's what was making you scream like a little girl, huh? Nightmare woke you up? Afraid of the scary monsters?"

The glower returned, all hardness and fire and fang—if he had them, that is, and it didn't escape me how strange it was that I would think him with fangs at all.

"Get out, before I make you."

I nearly retorted something really stupid, but stopped myself. That had been a bad call. Embarrassment or not, he was my only way out. I had no other leads. Besides this, what else would I do with my life? Clean dishes and dig holes in Ilia's garden until I died?

There was always tomorrow…I could convince him tomorrow…

I had turned and had my hand on the handle when the thick, silken braid of my loped off hair hit me in the back.

"Forgetting something?"

I bent down and put my hand on it, but paused. The little flickers of leftover flames danced across the orange hair, setting it aglow with amber. Offset with the dark wood behind it, something moved in me. My heart beat out its first need in the darkness and I remembered the terrified scream that had brought me up there to his house in the first place.

Scarred and beastly as he was, I didn't want to leave him.

I didn't straighten, but sat down, right there before the door, running a hand down the braid and averting my eyes.

"I'm sorry," I muttered. "I did that wrong. I…I really am stupid." And terrified. And embarrassed. And powerless. I spat the worse curse that came to mind.

Link, who had already moved to remove me, froze. I only knew this because I was watching his shadow against the floor. He gave another sigh, this one loud and shaken. After a few moments, where I waited for his hands to shove me out the door and the last flames died to embers, he crouched down with a groan.

"She'd curse like that too," he said quietly.

The vague and obvious reference to that alien babe annoyed me. "Full words, please."

"Midna. Sometimes we'd get into these huge gnarly fights after a long day where she was just being a general…well, I guess I was too. But she'd end it off like that. 'I'm sorry, take it or leave it,' and curse like an old man that'd lost a gamble."

His tone had lightened considerably and I dared to peek around the lone braid hanging in my face. On meeting his smile, my insides jerked as though have forgotten how to work and heat flooded down to my fingertips.

But it wasn't necessarily a happy smile. Just warm. Bittersweet, maybe.

"Thank you for being concerned enough to check up on me. You're right. I do have nightmares. And…of course I'll help you find your memory."

The almost bipolar switch totally threw me off, and I started garbling like a freak.

"You're right I was worried—like your head was getting torn—it was a jerk thing of you to—it's just—you'll help me?"

"Why wouldn't I?"

Because I was a bitch, that's why. A strange severe looking bitch feeding off the selfless kindness of his friend and busting into his house in the middle of the night to throw hair at him and make demands. Maybe the person I was reverted to being like this when confused and scared, or maybe I had lost all kindness and decency along with my memories.

But seeing his face, seeing the warmth and the tired, but earnest kindness lined in the same place I had seen a wild, savage thing before suddenly took up the blank space within me. It filled up my head, poured into the empty memories, stirred the trembling, pathetic, terrified thing I really was hidden inside…

I stretched across the space between us and threw my arms around him. Several sensations hit me like fireworks: his chopped pine and grass scent; the heat of his bare skin; his sharp intake of breath. In a flash I came to what I was doing and became ensnared between the urge to let loose and sob on his bare chest and to recoil back like a slinky.

Thankfully, the latter won out.

"I really am insane," I said.

And before I could continue this stupid madness that made no sense and make even more of a fool of myself, I jumped up and slipped out of his door and into the night.