Work Text:
Midna hides in Link's shadows.
There is the sun casting light overhead, making a shape that looks as Link does upon the grass of Hyrule field. Midna hides within that. There are also the shadows that come from candlelight, from torches, from the moon and the stars. There are the gradients of color that come from light upon skin and cloth. There are the folds of Link's tunic, the spaces between the links of his chainmail, the detailing of his boots and gloves. There is reflection and depth. Midna hides in the shades of green that are Link's clothes. She kicks out the fleas and the ticks that cling to the tunic's cloth, and she breathes in the scent of soil and grass and pollen. She smells the woods, and the scent is both alien to the Twili, but also good. She smells sweat. She feels the radiation of Link's body heat, when he moves, when he runs. She feels the beat of his heart. When she speaks to Link, she has slipped into the shadow of his neck, under his hat, or in the slivers of shadow in the shell of his ear.
As the Princess of the Twili, she would have never dared such intimacy. She is not a princess now. She is a creepy little imp. She is hideous. She feels hideous. She bares her teeth and laughs, eeee heee heee and bullies heroes with the sweet hearts of pups, and doesn't care, she doesn't care! She is a vile, monstrous thing, who scorns the world of the light, and thinks only of the Twili, who loves no one above her duty to the Twilit world, and yet when she cups the sound of Link's heartbeat to herself, she wants to wail from the sound of it, from the warmth and the sound and the forest-Hyrulian scent of this young man.
Oh, she is vile.
Perhaps they knew what they were doing, when they sealed her tribe away into the Twilight.
She is vile and monstrous and full of bitter-sweet and bitter-hate.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh.
She hides in Link's shadow like a second skin, like a cloak wrapped round him. When he is a wolf, she rides on his back. Her teeth are sharp and her face is sharper still, sharp and sly and secretive. She presses her nose to his fur and it smells like him, it smells like the young man from the woods. His heart is beating, warm and steady and true.
She always knew that she would have to smash the Mirror of Twilight. She had imagined, in the nights while Link slept, and she floated as a specter under the stars: she had imagined taking one shadowy fist and smashing it though the glass, everything crumpling and shattering into silver light.
When she finally finds herself in the moment to do so, she almost cannot.
Link is too much for her.
Her sweet, wolf-hearted champion.
She raises her hand, and her tear is wet and warm against her outstretched palm, and the mirror breaks as gently as the first kiss she ever gave to Link in the shadow of his cheek: secret, and soft, and silent.