Hey guys. So I was super bored tonight and just had this idea kicking around in the old cranium. Both of my other stories are like right down to the nitty gritty right now and it's pretty stressful. So I just needed to do something to get my mind off of them but still working. Also it's 2 AM so this is what I got.

Don't know if I'll continue with this, but maybe if I get enough love and reviews and whatnot I might? I guess only time will tell! Kind of veers off from the traditional tale but I guess that'll only really be obvious if I continue... Anyways, let me know :)

Much love,

Leavenodoubt

It had been eleven years since he'd stepped foot in this land. Eleven years, nearly to the day.

Here he was once called a hero, but not anymore.

Here he once knew the names of people in town, and they knew his. But now if he saw their faces, he wasn't sure if he would recognize them, be able to recall.

There was a girl here, elusive like a bluebird in winter that knew him once. Her face was only a memory, and even that memory was of a different time. Sometimes he struggled to remember the exact color of her eyes, or the shape of her lips. There was no picture for him to remember her by, only a memory that wasn't even his. It was a memory that belonged to a boy that died long ago.

Still he thought of her. In his mind, her gold hair was in the sky, and she cried as she held his hand. Some days he could barely remember why she cried. If he thought hard, he could hear her voice, if only for her words, not the sound. He had lived through many days, more than he ought to have. But through them all he still remembered her. He at least could remember her name.

There were no leaves on the trees now. The last time he had seen this place it had been green and warm. Now it was cold, empty and quiet. Darkness comforted him on the way home, stars had watched over him. They were the only ones that had followed him to places he never wished to see again, and back. He had always hoped he would return here. But now it didn't feel real, it didn't feel quite the same as when he was a child leaving here for the first time.

"Is it you?"

He supposed he should have been startled, but all he felt was relief. He had been sitting in an empty courtyard for most of the night. He liked the stillness of it all, he liked the quiet. There was a pause, hesitating to face her for the fear of seeing her after all this time, he wondered if she would be the same. But he did, eyes cast downward for her to look upon him, though he couldn't quite bring himself to look upon her yet.

"Are you a ghost?... A spirit?" she asked, a tired ache breaking her words.

His lips twitched, shaking his head he finally looked up. She wasn't as he remembered, this woman was a different one than in the memory of that boy. But her eyes were the same. He felt a tremor in his chest as she drew nearer to him, slowly, one foot after the other. When she was close enough, he saw the moonlight reflected in the glimmer of her eyes, the tears in them.

She swallowed, crossing her arms over her chest to protect her from the night's breeze. Her white nightgown drifted at her bare feet. "Won't you touch me? Prove that you're real?" she asked in earnest quietly.

He held out his hand, waiting for her to break through that unseen barrier that had separated them for so long. She lifted hers, gingerly placing her smooth palm into his as a silent tear fell down her cheek. That was all he could bear as he brought her long, slender fingers to his cheek, a shuddering breath escaping his lips. He slipped her hand behind his neck, stepping closer to her to encircle her waist in his arms. "I watched from my window. I didn't think it would ever be you," she whispered, voice shaking with tears.

"I'm sorry," were the first words he spoke back to her, but that was the first thing he had wanted to say. It didn't begin to say what he thought could make up for her tears, that look on her face built up from years and years of waiting. "I'm sorry."

"You're not a dream?"

"No."

"I thought this might be."

This was the only thing that convinced him she wasn't a dream. When night fell and he began to wonder if any of it had really happened, if she had loved him in a different time or if she had only been a light at the end of a nightmare. He had lived through many nightmares.

He could feel her chest expand and then deflate as she relaxed into him. The shape of her body fit into his, he hadn't remembered the feeling of her until then. He tried to memorize it—it was like a habit; holding onto trivial things for fear of losing them. Time had taken from him again and again.

"You're real," she whispered, her warm breath against his ear. Time had even taken from him the sound of her whisper; nothing had ever sounded so pure.

"Things are so different," he murmured, his voice thick though he couldn't understand why there was a pain in his chest he could not diffuse, "I didn't know it had been so long."

She only pulled back for a moment, the pallor of her face glowing in the pale moonlight, the stardust flickering in her eyes, before closing her lips to his just once. She leaned her forehead against his chest. He was taller now than he was the last time she had kissed him. "Does it still feel the same?" she asked, and with her chest so close to his, he could feel her heart beating steadily, her body trembling.

He cupped her face in his hands, returning her lips to his the way he'd thought about for years, the way he'd only done in a different time that didn't belong to him anymore. Her supple lips were the same, felt the same, tasted the same. Her body moved the same way, hands touched the same way. She was gentle and lithe and at the same time fierce like a flame. She barely parted them from each other, her lips still grazing his, and her hot breath still mingling with his. He could feel her lips move against his as she spoke, "Does it still feel the same?"

"It feels better," he murmured, a pit in his stomach that he couldn't decide was either painful or pleasurable.

"Will you be gone by morning?" she asked hopelessly.

He shook his head, "I don't know."

"Then before then, would you tell me?"

His brow furrowed, that knot in his stomach turning into sickness. "Tell you what?"

She touched his swollen lip with her index finger, "How long has it been... ten years?"

"Longer," he answered almost immediately.

Her eyes caught his again, fire in his veins as she studied his face with those familiar blue eyes. "Tell me why it took you so long to come back."

He smoothed the hair that had blown across her face away, and he could see it in her eyes. He could see a hint of betrayal and hurt that he wished never to see. Maybe that was part of what kept him for so long, it was hard to think of a single reason, but he hated that pain he had caused. In that hurt he saw the little girl that had sent him off eleven years ago with an ocarina and a song. Since then he had almost always been alone. Travelling through time had taken every other person in his life from him, his own selfishness to reclaim them had lost him the only girl he'd been left with. "I can't."

"Why?" she asked, tears filling her eyes again. They changed when they were filled with tears... they were no longer familiar this way.

"If I tell you," he began hesitantly, folding her back into his arms, "I'll have to start this all over."

But what does it mean? I guess the only way to find out is to favorite and review and all that snazzy business...