I'm baaaaack! I think I'll finish this story. I'm also starting 'Fantiality Infinity' again too. ^.^ Sorry for the wait. I hate unfinished stories.

I also have chapter ten, but I got to edit that and other stuffs. I got started on 11 today.

"Love is an earnest and sincere concern for another person's well being."

Chapter 9

And since I couldn't think of anything to say to dissuade him, and, in my heart, knew him to be right, I let the silence fall. The kettle whistled, tea was poured, and then left before me with two lumps of honey. Link scraped the first letter into the fire. Then the second and third. The forth he folded and sealed with string. Only then did he take a sip from his tepid tea. I reached out of my blankets to take a sip as well, and the sugar soothed some raw piece of my soul.

I glanced back after I finished my mug to see grey morning light trickling through the window high above. I had yet to see Link dress into his night clothes or nod off once.

"Have you slept at all?" I asked.

He didn't answer, his gaze lost somewhere above his tea cup. My face trailed down to his rocking foot. I watched it and stirred. Inexplicably moved, I put down the mug and brought out my other arm to reach for him. He flinched away at my touch.

"Sorry, you said something?" he said, as though he didn't just jerk away from me.

I should explain myself, but I couldn't. All I knew was that seeing his foot wobbling back and forth like that made me ache and hurt to hold him, and even as I crawled out of my warm place and out into the cold to reach him, I could feel my eyes burning. He shuddered and jerked even more beneath my touch, the beginning of a protest a breath on my arm, but then a settled stillness came over him.

The next thing I knew, I was the one being grabbed. He took me in great handfuls, as though desperate to grab as much of me as he could. Once I was crushed to his chest, my legs left to awkwardly find a place to tangle about him and on the floor, his hands twisted up in my shirt and hair. He buried his face into the curve where my shoulder met my neck and breathed in deep.

"Din," he croaked.

Then he gave a quiet, shaking sob. I thought I should be horrified, or at least embarrassed to have a nigh stranger holding onto me for dear life and sobbing into my shoulder, but my own tears prickled out, as though I had almost expected it of him. I clung to him all the harder.

"I don't have to leave," I said. "You don't know if remembering is bad for me."

He shook his head.

"Are you sure?"

In answer, he ducked said head down until only his hair remained on my shoulder. I sighed and, after a moment's hesitation where I wiped the few tears from my face, reached up a hand to cautiously stroke his hair.

"In order to live here, you'd have to no longer be twili," he muttered. "To do that…you'd have to shed all of it…all of it…and…"

"Full sentences. Be a big boy."

He gave a wet, humorless chuckle. "Brat. That's not how you comfort someone."

"Not my forte'. You were saying?"

Pulling back, he sniffed and turned his face so that his thick bangs covered the majority of his face. "A too arrogant part of me sort of hoped that you'd come here to be with me, but, then, if that were the case I wouldn't be hurting you, would I? Even if you had forgotten me."

Sound logic. Even if it didn't click right in my head. Though I got a bit more distracted by my heart, which had picked up the moment he'd gathered me in his arms and now gave more sporadic, twanging jumps. I could have had sticks caught in my throat.

"Link…I don't think—"

"You're Midna, I know."

But the moment he said that, I didn't know what it had been I was about to say. Though I suddenly wished I were Midna. I wanted to be the woman who deserved the affection torturing him now and eking out of the lines of his hands as they lingered on my forearms before he pulled away. Even as he stood and sheepishly scuttled from my sight to vanish in the depths of his house, my soul reached for him, cried for him. I wanted nothing more than for his warmth to wrap desperately around me again. I wanted him to stay, to explain why his art turned to nightmares, why he glowed in the darkness of my memories like a too-bright sun, why he moved me.

The dawn's light had spilled pink into the tree house when I jumped to my feet. I went to the ladder and dropped to all fours.

"You're my reason." I said into the darkness below. "I've known it ever since I saw you. You're my reason, Link."

"To what?" came a voice echoing down from below.

My arms started to shudder. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the black smear of his painted shadow demons.

"I don't know," I said, regretting saying anything at all.

"So that could be anything at all?" A pause of quiet. Then, "Even so…I can't let you die. If you revert back to a twili, the light will kill you. I swore I felt something of twilight about you when you were down in Ilia's basement, like a shade crossing your skin or…so just give me a moment and I'll be back up, I'm just gathering some things for you. Rusl will probably take you."

"You take me!"

Nothing came from below. Trembling, I sat back to put a hand to my head, where an ache had started to throb. I thought I recognized the shattered glass feeling prickling along my arms. I clenched my eyes and willed myself to not think.

His boats thunked on the way up the ladder. Then they quicken. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine." And I was. The pain was bearable, and even passing as I spoke. "But take me with you, please."

Even as I said that, it came to me. A sky full of stars, sand as far as a man could see, rising and falling in curves. In the distance a hulking monument, crowned with seven gold, winged circles, sentries to the evil below.

And Link, dressed in green, smiling at me beneath my small hand. Will you go with me?

Pain broke across my flesh as it had before. My blood turned to knives, my head to fire. The pink dawn light burst to blazing, bleaching my world.

I lost track of myself. When I came to, Link had me in his arms and had already made his way half way across the village. From beneath I almost recognized the firm set to his jaw and the fire to his eyes.

"Link, no,"

"If these flashes keep coming, send me a letter. I'll be there in a moment, but for now this is the only thing I have to go off of."

"But you said you'd come…you said…" I cried out, cringing in on myself. Through the knives I thought I could feel his arms tightening about me.

The next time the blaze died down and the pain faded, I found myself on a couch, with Link talking to the man I had come to associate with the kind blond woman with the easily sunburnt son.

"—I'm really sorry about this short notice, but—I'll pay you back, I honestly will—"

"Calm down, son. It's the least I can do. Don't worry about paying me back, I know what you've done."

"Compelled to do, Rusl, there's nothing special about what I did."

"You're modesty isn't funny, and you haven't slept a wink, have you? Get home and get some shut eye. We'll be out of here within the hour."

I reached up drowsily and stared down in momentary confusion at my too-pale hand. I could still see dirt from Ilia's garden beneath my nails. Funny. I shouldn't be going anywhere. Screw Link and his messed up idea of life, I had a palace to build, didn't I? What had happened to that idea? And my memories—

Oh. So he was right. He did cause them. He did cause the pain, the blinding light. The sensation of being bleached by the sun.

I shot up. "Link!" Then wavered as the blood rushed to my head.

His arm caught me as I tipped from the couch. "If this doesn't work, write. Promise?"

I growled the best I could. "I don't need to promise, you pathetic man. Of course I will." And I looked up just in time to see his responding, quirked smile, though it didn't reach his eyes. I had to hold my breath as I felt another tide of glass and memory fighting to rise up.

"Be safe." And pushing me back into place on the couch, he gave a nod to the brunette, squarish Rusl, and left out the front door. I felt like something important hadn't taken place and ended up staring at the place where he had been long after he left, even when Rusl's wife had come out from their bedroom to help him pack. She passed by me to check on me, but I hardly had any words to respond to her, other than meek 'thank you's for her kindness.

"Is he sure?" she said to her husband.

"That boy knows a lot more than he lets on," said Rusl grimly. "And Renado was technically the one to guide Link in getting Ilia's memories back. And, well, there are quite a few legends of healing surrounding Kakariko."

"But first thing in the morning?"

"Hush," he said rather gruffly. "I'll be back tomorrow at the latest. We needed some new sheers and ingots anyways, I'll get them while I'm there."

"Please be safe."

"Always am."

I averted my eyes as they kissed. The pain had almost completely dissipated, though it remained in my chest where my heart thumped an erratic, unnerving rhythm. I was missing something. Something important. At the same time, the voice of pride that echoed alone from the darkness whispered that Link was right. That boy had always had a good head for puzzles.

I dropped that thought as the glittering, razor glass agony threatened to raise its head. I found myself being fed a sweetened gruel by the woman. She threw a worn, second-hand cloak over me as I stood awkwardly by the door, having to bow my head in order to not feel the top of the doorframe on my scalp.

A little mewl alerted her to Fila.

I jumped. "Can I say good-bye?"

Uli nodded and brought out Fila, who was bleary eyed and fussy for food. I kept my ginger hug brief, as the little girl's head bobbed about my shoulder for a breast or bottle to suckle.

"Thank you for your patience," I told the babe as I gave her back.

Uli smiled at that, bobbing her babe to quell her cries if but a moment longer. "You are always welcome."

"I've done nothing to deserve your welcome," I said, watching out the window as Rusl came back around, a mule and cart following.

"And neither has Fila," she finished curling up on the couch and settled her baby to a breast. "And yet she is just because she exists."

Those words circulated in my head as I loaded onto the little wagon with Rusl. They warmed the emptiness in my like fire and Link's honey tea. It whispered of hope in a world where one doesn't have to fight to have a place to live, but one has that right by birth.

Then why would such a world hurt me? I thought as I watched the little village duck back beneath the forest and the sun peer out above the treetops. Why would such a world, would light, coerce Link to let me go?

But that was easy, wasn't it? What could be the biggest difference between me and Fila?

"I'm bad," I whispered to the morning air. "Maybe even evil."

And Link? You make me so.