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A wolf lies in chains, waiting for someone to find him.
The cellar is damp and bleak in the best of times, but coated in Twilight, the air is drained of every hint of human warmth that would normally offer slivers of comfort. Even with his senses altered, he cannot smell the dust. It is like being trapped in an unsettling dream. With the images of the arrow hitting Ilia’s back frozen solid in his heart, he prays every moment to wake up.
Instead, the shadows start to speak.
--
The usurper king’s painted-over invasion of the light realm is nothing but a pale and slightly comical imitation of her golden, magic-simmering home. The boy-beast’s transformation stands out as the only interesting thing she has found in it. She appears before him, all snickers and gleaming fangs, phasing through the bars just to taunt him, dancing around the cellar like a persistent fly.
It is all so easy. Her own people were only subjected through painful transformation into mindless wraiths. A little fur and a tail, and this boy is frightened into following the whims of what he takes for a demon? A little tantrum from the usurper, and the Princess blessed with divine protection gives up her kingdom? The light dwellers are lucky she needs them. At least, she dares to hope she will not have to overstay her welcome.
The wolf can run fast, and obeys well, and does not ask too many questions. Midna admits there is comfort to be found in the little bit of power she has over him, after so much has been taken from her. He does not know her humiliation. His back makes for a comfortable seat from which to watch this washed-out world, ever-changing in its colors.
--
“What’s the matter, wolfie? Out of form today?”
It is not what Link needs to hear as three shadow beasts pin him down to the ground – almost umber-dusted still, even in Twilight. He will never get used to the strength of their spidery hands. He will never not wince at his body’s memory of wriggling in their grip as his flesh twisted into the wolf.
This time, however, that particular memory is not what has caught him off guard. When the shadow beasts fell from the sky, staring him down without faces, all he could think of was the stray story from the villager spirits guarding the Ordon kids. When we came to save her, there were two monsters waiting…
The beast strikes before he can wriggle free. The impact sends him just far enough for another to catch him with a blow of its own. He cannot tell which creature claims credit to which flash of pain, but the air, already so coarse through his wolf-lungs, runs out of him all at once. He tries to brace himself on his hind legs, but something in his lower ribs is too broken to allow it.
He snarls, looking up at the third beast, who raises a black-rotten arm to finish the work of its kin –
– and all three monsters are zapped by a bolt of fiery current, jerking them all upwards before they fall, limbs spread in resignation.
He sucks in a ragged breath through his fangs and sinks his front claws into the ground, ensuring that they will not find him helpless when they rise again – but the shades remain still and limp, until they burst into soot-like particles, the building blocks of dark magic rather than flesh.
Midna floats over to him, her hand-hair fading from a vivid glow. Though he tries to kick himself back up, he cannot quite seem to get on all four legs. The first acute waves of pain are already ebbing, though that may be attributable to the dull drumbeat still pounding in his head, drowning out everything else now that the immediate danger is past. He struggles to stand under Midna’s gaze, feeling more like a young goat than a sacred beast.
Midna’s eyes wander over to his hind legs. She lifts one sinewy arm to rest at her hip.
“Tcheh!” she scoffs. “Well, that won’t do at all, will it?”
She snaps her fingers, lighting a little spark of that same vermillion shade. Something bursts in the air between them – and then in his bones, sending a shudder down his frame.
The pain blows out like a candle, and his legs feel like his own again.
“If you can’t keep up, I’ll have to start looking for a replacement,” she says as he finally hoists himself upright, a fresh breath of dusky air running down his throat, “and boy, is that a pain I do not have time for! Try to stay sharp, hmm?”
Midna wastes no time twirling herself onto his back once more. She digs her heels in, urging him to continue through the Kakariko gorge as if nothing has happened. Link obliges, as he must, but his paws take a few tentative steps before resuming their usual gait. It feels like he has forgotten something.
He still is not quite sure how well she understands him in this speechless form. She certainly ignores him whenever the alternative does not immediately fall to her fancy. But sometimes, she almost seems to intuit him far better as a wolf than through his human words. Only moments ago, as he stared helpless at the living ghosts of the children in the cellar, she had not skipped a beat to throw salt in the wound that had only just begun to form in his chest.
My lonely little hero!
Whatever mockery she surely has in store for him, he hopes she can hear his silent thank you as the strength in his legs brings him back to his full sprint.
If she does, she pays it no mind, only clenching her small fists into his fur.
--
Once, Link asks her if she prefers the nighttime. Is it more like her home?
She calls him an idiot. It doesn’t matter if the pale ball of fire passing for a Sol in that barren sky is up or not – she still cannot manifest as more than a shadow. She supposes she blends into the dark better. Once or twice, she has taken advantage of the fact to jump out and spook him.
Now, though, she stays close to the firelight, so that he can tell where her contours end. She will not admit it, of course, but shame had sunk in her gut when the boy had sulked off after her little pranks. Something like that would not truly frighten him, of course. She knows what his true fear looks like. Blue eyes, wide and wild, darting around a castle cellar. White knuckles around the hilt of his sword as a bulblin slashes a dirty dagger near the ear of a village child. Cold sweat on his brow as he stirs in his sleep.
It is unnecessary to poltergeist herself into his nightmares. He already has enough of those.
In shadow form, Midna simmers near the edge of the ground’s surface, casting one glance at the boy, surprisingly still as the embers gnaw at the last remaining fire logs. He is asleep, she realizes, but not at rest. His head just barely threatens to loll down his shoulder, and his arm is limp against his knee, but little else betrays him as anything less than alert.
Midna watches her servant. She might have pushed him too hard today. After all this business with the amnesiac girl and the fish-people and even the silly business in Castle Town she had allowed him, she urged him to follow the counsel of the light spirit and hurry up to whatever den of death hid the final Fused Shadow. She was so close. Just one more, and she would finally be strong enough to set things right. He could rest after, she had figured, go back to the girl and the greenery and the goats, forget whatever shadows she dragged him into and live out his days in the light. She goaded him on until he collapsed on the banks of Lanayru.
To make it worse, he had apologized. She called him a pumpkin head and let him set up camp.
Midna floats a little closer. Gravity is starting to get the better of him – his head falls a few inches further every time before he catches himself upright. Even half-asleep like this, his face has barely softened. Darker dreams may not have caught him yet, but she can tell they lurk around the corners of his mind.
With the swift motion of a shaded wind, she blows out the last traces of the fire, letting the night swallow them both. This startles him awake, but she is ready with the unmistakable rustle of a bedroll, dragging it closer to him, offering a softer place to land.
“Don’t worry your pretty little head about it,” she tells him. “I’ll keep watch.”
She cannot see his expression, but he sighs as he lies down, and sleeps through the night.
--
The rain falls like knives on his back, where Midna lies dying, and he cannot even shield her from that.
He runs through the despairing fields into a town that screams at the sight of him. He balances on parapets and ropes in a sewer, ignoring its fervent reek, avoiding the rats as best he can. He dashes and jumps across decaying stonework and she is silent through it all, save for her thin, fraying breaths.
If she falls, he does not even know how to lift her onto his back again.
Something about this new, unwilling change into the wolf’s hide is deeply wrong. His usual transformations feel like stepping through a veil, guided by a magic-sparking hand, washed over by instinct and scent and moonlight. After Zant’s curse, it is as if the beast is a thing apart from him, holding him down by the jugular. There is a throbbing pain inside his skull, but whether that is due to some shadowy arts or the searing frustration at his own uselessness, he cannot tell.
It has been a long time since he has felt so alone.
He climbs the tower of the princess-in-mourning and thanks the Goddesses that he finds her where they left her. This time, he has no time to waste with awe or fear or confusion. He lowers down not in reverence but in urgency – just so the Princess can see Midna’s husk barely clinging onto him, just so he can pray: help her!
Princess Zelda, so stoic in her grief, takes Midna’s tiny hand in hers, and Link can see that she breaks just as he does when Midna pleads with what is left of her voice not for her own life, but for his.
The Princess knows how to find strength in broken things.
Zelda’s eyes are steadfast and unblinking, fixated on Midna desperately protesting her own salvation, as she fades like starlight at the break of day. Not a trace of her is left as Midna’s feet – solid, real, alive – touch the stone floor. The imp covers her face. Her breath still shudders.
In the lingering air, or perhaps through some primeval bond, Link senses what the Princess has entrusted him with: a gift to be treasured.
--
Afterwards, they know the value of small comforts: the shade of a cloak under the blistering desert sun, a sweet apple swiped from the market after a half-day’s trek through Hyrule Field, a wolf curling around her to shield her from the northern wind, a hand on a cheek, a promise to stay.
--
The bulblins poison their arrows now, it turns out, and Midna curses whatever cruel deity decided to grant these creatures enough intelligence to play tricks but not enough to stay out of Link’s way. She zaps the monster to fall to its own brutal death and warps them both to safety.
Link releases a scream unlike most anything she has heard in his voice as she pulls out the arrow from his shoulder. They have red chuchu jelly and even a moderately helpful fairy on stash. Enough to get him through the worst, but he still has to sweat the poison out.
His forehead is hot as desert stones to the touch, even in the night-chilled cave she has found for him, and his breath is too uneven. Midna wants to weep at the sight of his hazy eyes. Clouded glass has no business in the blue eyes of her beast, sometimes gentle, sometimes feral, always filled with simple certainties.
Not that she has any time for whining. Her healing magic has always been crude, unsuited for more sophisticated maladies, but she can stay at his side, sending him sparks of encouragement to help his body fight its way through one more battle he does not deserve. What’s more, she can force mouthfuls of potion down his throat once his jaw grows too slack. She tries to be gentle.
She is supposed to watch his back, damn it. There are pains she cannot spare him, not if either of their worlds is to retain any hope, but this is ugly and unnecessary and one more reminder why he ought to hate her and all that she stands for.
Instead, he murmurs her name in the throes of his fever dreams.
She holds onto him through the night, stroking his hair, and promises with all her being to leave him to better things once this is over.
--
Link wakes as dawn blushes just outside the cave, wrapped in a blanket soaked with sweat, but clear-headed and no longer in pain. Only his parched tongue screams for something to drink as soon as he has come to his senses enough to hear it.
Before he can form the words, Midna is there with a bottle of water, her eyes still wide in concern as she presses it to his lips.
“Does it hurt? Can you sit? Drink some more. Idiot, you’d think you’d have learned how to dodge by now!”
Once she opens her mouth, the words cascade out in a fretful litany, but Link can only mellow out in a smile. With her by his side, he has no fear.
--
“I’ll stick to floating, thank you very much!”
Link laughs, and much to her annoyance, asks if she is scared. In response to that, she has no choice but to get on the horse. Of course, she does not so much get onto Epona’s back as much she sinks from her comfortable position sulking in mid-air into the saddle in front of Link.
For a moment, she thinks he is about to wrap his arms around her, but then his hands stop midway to hand her the reins. They are too wide, too loose and too limp in her too-small hands. Her mind is blank trying to remember what he usually does with them. He laughs again, clearly pleased to have her dumbfounded for once, and put his hands over hers to guide her.
A quick whip in the air to make Epona start moving. A gentle pull to the left to turn. A firmer grip to make her stop. On Link’s back, Midna never has any need of such signals. By now, they move as one being.
Epona is not as stupid as Midna has sometimes accused, however, and moves with patience to accommodate her new, awkward rider. Mostly for Link’s sake, she supposes. The horse has been through a lot, but has never wavered in heeding even his most unreasonable requests. She wonders how much the creature understands. Is she waiting for him to return to the farm boy he once was, like all the people from his village? Does she realize he will never be that boy again?
She is startled out of her own thoughts by almost getting knocked out of the saddle. Epona breaks out in a sudden sprint that has her rattling around like a loose sack of apples. She loses her grip of the reins and struggles to find something to steady her – her hands instinctively grasp for strands of coarse, gray fur – but Link presses against her back to ensure she does not fall.
At first, she thinks this is the horse’s rebellion against her own doubts, but once Link coaxes Epona into a gentler trot and she turns for a heartbeat to see a canine grin spread across his face, she realizes that this is his idea of a prank.
He apologizes right away, barely suppressing a laugh. He just had to see her reaction. Besides, he adds, that’s the best part of horseback riding. Better than flying.
“As if you have a more informed opinion,” she pouts.
His warm chuckle rumbles in his chest against her back, along with his heartbeat. He guides Epona into a grove lined with oak trees just as the sky starts to shift. Keeping her seated firm in the saddle, he shares stories of teaching the Ordon kids to ride horses and taming Epona as a filly and what it was like to ride through Faron Woods back when he thought that was the furthest he would ever venture into the world.
Pressed against him like this, Midna feels small, and safe, and strangely at home. They ride until the darkness falls too thick. He helps her dismount to set up camp for the night. For the rest of the evening, she lets herself forget about mirror shards, monsters, and miserable duty.
--
There are times in his half-dreams when he thinks he sees a lady in billowing robes, craning a long neck to gaze at the moon. Sometimes, he can barely make out her shape, but feels a sparkle of fireflies flutter around him in embers, glowing teal and orange in the dark. A carillon laugh, hundreds of brass bells snickering in unison. He always wakes before he can come near.
He turns over in his bedroll to find Midna awake, arms folded over her stubby legs, staring at a clear night sky filled with stars.
“It isn’t like home,” she says, “but I can see why you like it.”
--
Clad in the wolf’s hide, his eyes still soften into such human tenderness at the sight of a stray cat or lost monkey or when she wakes having slumbered with her fingers curled up in his fur. The same eyes can shift to savage hunting instinct as he slashes his sword against any monster that dares to lay a hand on anything he loves well. Midna knows by now that most of the known world falls into that category.
She is far more discerning in her affections, wary and guarded with her heart, far too aware how quickly things can be stolen away. She still tries to convince herself her walls are sturdy enough to see her through the end of this. It is a pitiable exercise, but the thought of what must come after twists an edge sharp as a mirror shard into her heart. She must be economical about her worries.
One sleepless night, he admits to her that the beast still scares him. He has no answer as to why the goddesses saw fit to bestow him the shape of a wolf. Fangs and claws do not come naturally to him. At least they didn’t, before. Now there are moments – with the blood from an enemy dripping down his canine jaw, running on all fours through the fields, howling in harmony with the ghosts roaming the land, he feels like he loses himself in it all. The memories of these moments do not sit well with him in human form. The ease with which he slips into those wild instincts frightens him. He wonders what makes him so different from the monsters they hunt down together.
He asks her if she understands, and she is quick to say yes. Of course she does.
He tells her that she helps, and gives her one of those damned smiles that can mean thank you or I promise or I’m here.
She wants to tell him that he does not have to worry, that she loves the beast and man in him both, but that is a luxury she can ill afford.
--
The Fused Shadows turn Midna into an eldritch oversized spider and sends her flying up the barrier to Hyrule Castle. By now, Link has seen his fair share of deities, but one look at this creature convinces him that she can rival them all. Lanayru’s strange warnings ring between his ears – were they for her, not for him?
Most of all, his heart stops dead in his chest when he sees the creature melt away to unpeel his familiar imp once more – falling helplessly at alarming speed.
He rushes to catch her before she hits the ground. For a few, hollow-hearted moments, she lies still in his arms. He does not know which name to curse. Before the panic rises too high in his chest, she sucks in a breath, and blinks.
He wants to keep her there, tell her that she has done enough, that she can rest, that she must promise him that she will stay safe and alive, no matter what it takes. She would never let him, he knows, but for the first time since Zelda’s sacrifice, she seems fragile.
But the rain starts falling, and the castle looms. They can only look up at what awaits them both.
--
The God-pretender waiting in the throne room is tenacious, she’ll give him that. Sneering in all the regalia of false king, stealing the skin of the Princess, and roaring as a beast, Ganondorf tries and tries again to strike a blow against all Midna has sworn to protect. She throws him aside with her magic and calls out to Link to dodge when she needs to – but Link has never fought better. Something primal in him seems to have awakened, turning his sacred blade against this remnant of history. He slashes and lunges with all that he has in him, kind beast and feral hero both.
They rip out the heart of the boar-like creature from the glowing wound in his chest and let him lie there to rot as the Princess finally awakens. Midna feels the tingle of magic being set right as Zelda’s gift leaves her body, but also a sudden loss torn from her heart, an empty space she hardly knew was filled with something so precious. Zelda tells her to say nothing. With more time and liberty, Midna would weep on the spot.
The pretender still refuses to die. Left to manifest as a nebulous fog of primordial hatred, this thing that was thrown into her realm to whisper chaos into Zant’s ears and claw its way across all worlds has the audacity to laugh as he turns his flames to burn them once more.
Enough, Midna thinks, and calls on the Fused Shadows.
She feels rather than sees Link reach out to stop her. Only indulging in the briefest of glances toward him and Zelda, she warps them away before they are given the chance.
Enough. No more will they have to fight her battles. Not now that she has the power to keep them out of harm’s way.
She lets the old, tempestuous, vengeful magic of her ancestors wrap around her and faces down what has always been her responsibility.
--
You took her from me.
Distantly, Link knows there are other crimes for which Ganon must answer at the end of a blade, but he cannot recall them as he swings the Master Sword with all the strength he has left in him. Ganon stands firm like a mountain, letting Link come at him rather than seeking him out. Though it is laced with an unnerving hunger betraying some ancient lust for blood, the King of Thieves still keeps a smirk on his face through it all. He thinks he has already won.
You took her.
Link is falling down a dark hole, seeing nothing but the crumbling pieces of Midna’s helmet, and does not know what will happen once he hits the ground. Something red and wet is dripping down his temple. Some dull pain pulsates through his ribs. His shield has almost been cleft in two. None of it is important enough to notice – he simply keeps thrashing with his sword as a man might do to keep from drowning.
If Midna was still here, Link might still remember the purpose of this battle. Now, all he knows is that this creature needs to die.
He lunges, and Ganon parries with his sword. He presses on, their blades clashing against each other, while Ganon braces against the ground.
“It is already done,” the creature says, and his voice is all wrong and wrung-out with malice, no longer pretending to the human dignity he clung to in the throne room. “The history of light and shadow was written long ago. Your little friend learned, and so will you.”
You took her!
Link growls as he summons all his force to push against the Ganon’s white blade – and overpowers him at last, sending him backing away to find his footing. Before he has the chance, Link rolls to the side and bolts to slash against the wound in his chest, again and again and again, as many times as he needs to cut down the root of the raging howl threatening to rip apart his own chest.
At last, Ganon falls to the ground. If not for the blood and grief blocking out his ears, Link might have heard the voices of heroes past as he jumps to deal the finishing blow. As it is, all is silent but for the final rattle of the Demon King.
Ganon rises to his feet only to die standing. A hesitant wind blows through their bones. Zelda approaches, lowers her head, and folds her hands in prayer for her fallen enemies and friends alike.
Link stands too, bruised and bleeding as he is. He does not know what else to do. There is no victory to be found in the entirety of Hyrule Field, in the rest of the lands, in worlds beyond the setting sun. Every muscle in his body aches to rest, but he sees little point in the idea. In anything.
That is, until a shadow appears on the horizon.
--
There is a moment before the end, as Zelda moves ahead over the foot of the hill overlooking the ruined castle, when Midna allows Link to bury his face against her collarbone – he is so much smaller than her now – and simply breathe, clinging to her robes, both knowing that they are alive and whole despite the world’s best efforts. Dusk turns into night across their shared sky. For a little longer, and for the rest of their lives, they will keep each other standing.
--
Duty means remembering. Midna has learned that the hard way.
Remembering the faces of her closest attendants as they were twisted into spidery underlings, prohibited by a crude shield even to whimper out their agony. The remnants of her home, reduced to debris. The poisoned air of the Light, corrupted by the essence of all she truly is. The frightened ghosts of all Link knows and loves. Zelda in her cloak, burdened by guilt and grief. The face of an innocent Yeti wife spinning to reveal fangs and red eyes. The overpowering, ancient cries for retribution that roar whenever the Fused Shadows envelop her to lend her their bloodthirsty power. The blaze of divine ire that consumed her as she knew bitter defeat, knowing that all that sings in her veins is the cause of this world’s suffering.
Duty means remembering all this as she steps onto the chiming platform of the portal that will take her home. Most of all, it means remembering the promise she made to herself even as Link insists on not taking his eyes off her. Zelda, at least, has the decency to look down.
She will leave them to something better. Something they deserve.
It is so hard to meet his gaze. He is leaving a question to hang in the air, ignorant still of what has to be done, hopeful for something new to start now that their battles are behind them. Midna is still selfish. She still wants nothing more than to take his hand and remain his shadow, stay in this world of gentle spirits and sun-warmed hay and fickle skies. No matter how much she wishes otherwise, she cannot channel this magic into anything but a tear, torn straight from her heart.
Duty says nothing about refusing to blink as she burns the sight of Link reaching out to her into her memory, once again trying to go where she will not let him follow, right until the very last moment.
Duty does not care about whether she will remember the calm of blue skies above her head, the whispers from a Princess’s heart murmuring in her own chest, the warmth of a wolf wrapping around her as she sleeps, a gentle grin on the back of a horse, the words of thanks she never deserved.
Unheeding, she engraves the words that will follow her every step for the rest of her life into her light-stained soul as she breaks down into sobs on the other side: I will remember.
--
The sadness that befalls him as dusk falls is only strange to those that do not know him as anything but a farm boy or wandering would-be hero. They welcome him back, but do not understand the furtive glances he throws at his own shadow. They do not recognize the feral gleam in his eyes.
Only Zelda knows, when she receives him on a makeshift balcony in the midst of her reconstruction efforts, and finds him missing half his heart. She understands the sensation. There is a wicked and wonderful laugh still ringing in her ears, too.
They look onto the market just outside the half-rebuilt castle walls, bursting with life in all its shapes and sizes, and know who has paid the price for the renewal of their world.
The Princess tells him to go where his heart calls him. There is precedent, after all. Heroes deserve at least a good try at happiness, after the war is done.
Link lowers his head in respect, but the Princess urges him to stand, as her equal, fellow bearer of Hyrule’s eternal curse. They have defied fate many times before, in many lifetimes. There is no reason to stop now.
“I do not think she would want you to give up without a fight, at the very least,” Zelda adds.
Link nods, and sets out for the horizon to live with what Midna has left him.