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The harsh screech of glass shattering. A belated speech. Forgiveness, maybe? Then, a bright, searing light, though this time it does not burn him like before.
Time passes.
Shadow does not.
— — —
It’s hard to think like this, Shadow figures, but for whatever reason he stubbornly holds on while the ink-black nothing cascades around him, eyes meeting nothing, ears hearing nothing, organs doing nothing. He can’t even tell if he has retained his shape, not when thinking is already so hard, not when he is barely hanging on to a simulacrum of humanity. No, he would take whatever his amorphous shadows decide to give him, just as long as he was still him.
It didn’t matter, because he couldn’t even get a good look at himself if he tried. He is a mere, stubborn thorn in this endless black landscape. Eyes unseeing, ears unhearing, though he remembers Vio telling him how the mind would make up things if not given any sort of stimulation. Did he have enough of a mind to make up things?
No, best not to think about that.
He was Shadow. Shadow Link. No. He is Shadow, Shadow Link. He holds onto that with white-knuckled grip, and he knows somewhere in the back of what remains of his mind that if he lost that, he would lose himself forever.
He is Shadow, Shadow Link.
He is Shadow.
He is…
He is…
— — —
He can feel himself slipping. Mist enshrouds him, gently caressing at his form, whispering softly, gently, Why not go to sleep? Why are you staying? Rest. Slip away. Become one with the void.
He—Shadow—has to say no, each and every time. There’s more to him—he could feel it, but it just… he just…
As if it even matters in this already pitch-black nothing, Shadow squeezes his eyes shut, pushing himself into a black void of his own making. Defiant, as best he could be in this nowhere, this space between, lines separated on a page.
Lines on a page…
His hand, guided along Hylian script that he couldn’t quite read. His fingers brushing against paper, textured parchment bumping along the ridges and valleys of his fingerprints. Ink spilling across pages as he wrote, as he wrote in his own strange amalgamation of Hylian and his home learned scrip. The Dark World wasn’t exactly known for its writing, he had explained to… to…
Panic.
Panic.
Anxiety grabs at his throat, squeezing tightly, choking out every other emotion. Part of him supposes that a different feeling besides just holding on should be a welcome change of pace, but what use is a renewed emotion at the cost of memory? He claws at it, as if struggling against the heavy shroud around him would wrest back what he forgot.
And now, a new fear settles right next to where the anxiety sits, across the table of that ever-whispering voice that told him to sleep. That fear now screeches over the whispers, stoking anxiety anew again and again.
What is he missing?
What else has he forgotten?
And why does his heart ache over it all?
His heart. That means he was still alive, right? So, perhaps living with it grinding like rocks forced to stick and slip against each other would be enough to keep him awake.
— — —
The rocks slipped. Fire erupted beneath his feet. Rumbling earth crumbled around him. A stake. Parched air scoring his throat.
Heartache.
Heartache, but a different kind than what he was experiencing.
Shadow turns the images in his hands. What was that feeling again? He grips tightly at the memory, sand running through his fingers the more he tries to remember.
But, like a stake, it pierces straight through him with sudden and absolute impunity.
Betrayal.
Betrayal.
That was the different type of hurt.
That hurt had coiled around him, squeezing out all the air in his lungs as he choked back tears trying to pretend he wasn’t hurt, that it was all expected, that he was fine, really, and if anyone heard him crying in the middle of the night then no they didn’t.
Shadow finds that the pain gripped him just as tightly as that day, but instead of trying to shove it down, he embraces it.
If he could cry, the void would be filled with his tears.
— — —
Time passes.
Shadow grabs and claws and gropes and scrapes against any and all of his memories, pulling the scattered bits to his chest, and he lets himself feel every ounce of pain, shame, guilt, pressure, anxiety, fear, and anything else that keeps him from drifting away.
Certain memories, however, he lets stay buried. One type of heartache was enough.
All he has to do is hold on.
Hold on.
Hold.
Hand.
Hands.
Hands?
Shadow squints, wondering if now is finally the time his mind decides to play tricks on him. The blackness wasn’t as dark, and purple wisps bleed above him, swirling between creating fingers, a solid-looking hand, and dashing away to cloudless shapes before beginning the process all over again.
The hand is reaching out to him.
Shadow frowns, lifting up his arm, willing his body to create the proper shape, copying the image of the hand pleading in front of him. Heaviness weighs upon him with the movement, and reaching his hand up to meet it may as well be an impossible task. The hand was so high up, and every miniscule movement of muscle overwhelms him with leaded agony.
He grits his teeth, letting himself be the thorn in this place’s side, and finally connects fingers with the outstretched hand, shaking in pain, body screaming for him to stop, absolute terror pounding in his heart.
Shadow feels a tug, and suddenly the darkness around him moves, and he’s being lifted up and up and up.
He breaks free of the surface. Harsh light envelops him, but it doesn’t burn. His eyes start to adjust, and instead of a bright sun he is met with the low light of a full moon. He feels his body shift and move and snap back into place. Large splashes of blackened goop cover the ground beneath him, as if the atmosphere of his limbo tried to drag itself along with him.
He feels the wind scurry across his skin. He hears the release of a tense breath. He feels the hand still heavy in his.
“Shadow?”
Shadow looks up, meeting those ice storm eyes that got him into this whole mess in the first place. The name slots itself back into place.
He opens his mouth, shocked. “V… Vi?” he rasps, barely able to make his throat work correctly, barely able to move his tongue to the right places to speak.
The eyes in front of him sparkle, and he’s met with a teary smile. “Shadow… I did it. Oh gods. I did it. You’re back.”
Shadow nods slowly, bewildered. “Vi…” he rasps again, scrunching his eyebrows together as he squeezes Vio’s hands. “Vio. Vio.” The name sounds right on his tongue. “Vio,” he says again, voice stronger. “You… came back for me?”
He looks again into ice storm eyes as Vio nods, and suddenly he remembers what made that betrayal tear him apart. Traitorous tears slip down pale cheeks, though this time he doesn’t try to wipe them away. “But I hurt you, didn’t I?”
“That doesn’t matter now, Shadow,” Vio replies, both hands cupping Shadow’s own.
Shadow frowns, thoughts struggling to stay in order as he parses through them. He settles on the only question he knows how to say. “Why?”
Vio helps Shadow to his feet, keeping him steady as he adjusts to gravity once again. “I made a promise,” he murmurs. “I made a promise to you, to me, to everyone, that I would bring you back. Because I know what you are, Shadow. And deep down, I think you know it too.”
Shadow could feel his knees begin to buckle, straining against his weight and the coil of panic coursing through him. “I- I tried to kill you. I wanted you dead. I wanted you to hurt like I was-“
His words are suddenly silenced by Vio’s insistent lips upon his. The world that had just barely started to move again stops. He could feel something new bloom in his chest, bright and warm and optimistic as a spring breeze.
No, this wasn’t an entirely new feeling. This was the one that made everything else hurt worse when he thought it wasn’t real.
“Because I love you, idiot,” Vio breathes against his lips as he pulls away. “Because I fell in love with you, and I knew that underneath all of your bravado, you just wanted a place to belong. A place to be loved. And I want to be that place. I love you, Shadow.”
Shadow could only stare back at him in shock. He vaguely registers the heat spreading across his face, blushing his cheeks and reddening the tips of his ears. “You…?”
Vio nods firmly. “I love you.”
Shadow finds he can’t speak, so he does the next best thing he could think of; kissing Vio, kissing him hard, and letting the contact convey how much he loves him back.
And, by the way they both cling to each other and exchange salty tears between kisses, he figures he did a pretty great job at conveying it.
Shadow pulls away, breathless, feeling the tears sting at the corners of his eyes and his throat protest in soreness. That didn’t matter. He embraces that feeling again, that emotion, that one that made everything hurt, but also made everything better. His heart jumps, rising straight to his throat when he sees Vio with happy tears in his eyes, bright and clear, with a smile too wide for his cheeks to contain it. He finds himself staring, smiling just as wide, before he remembers how to speak again.
“I love you too, Vi,” Shadow says, tugging Vio into a tight hug. “I love you too.”