Disclaimer and Notes: The Legend of Zelda and the events in Hyrule Warriors belong to Nintendo, Koei-Tecmo, Team Ninja, W-Force and whoever else owns them. This is for fun, not for profit.

I got this game as an unexpected Valentine's Day gift from my dear ArkNorth – definitely a man who knows and loves my geeky mind. I just finished playing through the Legend Mode and got the idea for this story about halfway through. Spoilers abound. The premise of this fan fiction comes from the fact that I played and won the last visit to the Valley of Seers and the final battle against Cia with Midna instead of Link (as the game recommends his weapons class). I decided "Screw that! I want a battle between two dark sorceresses!" and I had that battle. I also just really enjoy Midna's controls/attacks. I have yet to download any of the DLC and am writing inspired by the basic mode only.

BETWEEN TWO DARK HEARTS

Midna rode her summon-wolf pell-mell over the twists and turns in the field. She took the time to destroy the boss-monster of one more of the ruins under keep along the way, just to give Hyrule's troops behind her more territory. Even shadow-wolves had to mark their territory, after all. Maybe she was just feeling especially violent. The condition she'd left Link in had lit a fire in her belly.

"Damn beasts!" she hissed in her native Twili. She wiped a blood-spat off her right cheek. Cia was at the apex of the ruins. Midna was now riding over the ancient path, ascending stairways. The Twilight Princess had a score to settle. The original plan had called for Link to take on the sorceress, since he was the wielder of the Master Sword and Light was the counter to Darkness, but it looked like it was going to be dark on dark battle now. Link was down at the Fairy Fountain with Zelda. The Hyrulean forces had captured the area completely, but after decimating the enemy troops, the Great Fairy was once again sleeping and unable to render them any more aid.

Zelda stood guard. Link lay bleeding on the steps. Everyone had exhausted their supplies of red potion, save for Midna – she had two bottles. Zelda insisted that she keep them because even that much medicine wouldn't help their Hero in the state he was in and it was wisest for her to keep up her strength for the coming fight. Midna had watched as Link tried to get up. Zelda, kneeling beside him, gently held him back. She pressed her hands against the wounds in his chest and middle, over the rent mail, her fingers glowing with a gentle healing light. Even Proxi, his pet fairy who had more often than not egged him on, told him to stay down. He sat up and loaded a bow anyway and sniped at random monsters that tried to get near. Everyone else – Darunia, Impa, the captains… were holding the field. Lana was doing the Goddesses knew what and Ruto had long-since fled to their base camp, wounded worse than Link was. Zelda pleaded with Midna to go on ahead. She would try to join up as soon as she was sure that Link was stabilized.

Midna had paused for a moment, trying to decide what to do. Link gave her a fierce look and her mind was made up. She had to stop Cia herself, or at least keep her busy for a while.

Her shadowy mount reached the top steps where the enemy awaited. Cia laughed and showed off her tall and curvaceous figure and taunted them all. Midna grit her fangs and shivered in disgust. Cia had stolen her own tall body from her. She had been able to shift forms at will for some time now, after her dealings with Zant and Ganondorf in her era – this was not something that many people knew about her, but thanks to Cia, she was stuck all small and stumpy. The imp-form had its advantages, but being stuck in it was like being stuck in boots that were too tight – not that Midna much understood the Hylian fetish for wearing things on their feet. All the same, a common expression for courage – to "die with one's boots on" didn't mean you wore them all the time.

Midna's soul was blistering in this tight little form.

"You are coming against me?" Cia said sarcastically. "I was expecting the great Hero, not a little creature of darkness!"

"That's twilight to you!" Midna hissed. "And you know nothing of how to correctly wield darkness!"

"Is that so?" Cia laughed. "I think you're too much of a coward to wield the true power of the shadows!"

Midna charged up her magic, running her steed-wolf around the small arena. "Where I come from, the Night is as sacred as the Day! You know nothing!"

She dodged the mace-end of Cia's staff as it was whipped out toward her. The ruler of the Twilight commanded her steed-shadow to go in for a strike as she snapped her fingers, whipped around her hair and summoned an additional pair of dark wolves to charge and bite. When she found an advantage, she curled the end of her hair into a fist and slugged Cia right in the face - and the body - sending her flying. The sorceress quickly recovered and created portals that Midna found has an unfortunate stiffening effect on her body and her spells when she was caught in one.

"Why are you even bothering?" Cia snarled. "All of you will taste defeat!"

"You've lost your mind!" Midna countered, "What little of it was there to lose, anyway. At least judging from your little light half, you're a ditz! But at least she has some sense… Destroying yourself to destroy all of us! Don't make me laugh! I admire your soon to be spilled guts, but it gets you nothing!" She edged to the other end of the arena and drunk in some found magic. "No-thing! No-thing!" Midna began to sing-song as she giggled.

"You dare defy me! You will be utterly destroyed! You have no inkling of my pain!"

"Oh please!" Midna retorted as she charged up another attack with the triple-shadow wolves. "I will give everything to defy you! And nobody knows your pain? Give me a break! Do you know where Link is right now? He is dying! Because. Of. You!"

"Good!" Cia laughed. "Should I make it out of this, his soul will be born anew in a fresh life! I can find him early and make him mine! If we are all destroyed… we shall be destroyed together! Either way, we will be together!"

"So all the worlds and timelines revolve around you, do they?" Midna screamed. She was livid now and charging up a giant ball of oblivion in the grasp of her hair. "Do you really think that you are the only one of us to lose the love of a Hero?"

Cia, charging her deadly portals and summoning soulless shadow versions of her unrequited love, paused for just a moment to look Midna in the eyes. Midna's eyes held the truth and a sorrow as deep as star-bannered sky of sacred night. Down went the ball and the wolves returned to her a moment later. As one of their maws tore into the throat of a Dark Link and they both dispersed into broken specks of shade, Midna made a gesture toward them with her right hand.

"It looks like we aren't so different, you and I."

They were telling funny stories around the campfire. The Hyrulean forces were at a rare moment of rest, with the leaders enjoying a rare sugary delicacy that Zelda had brought with them to roast on sticks – marshmallows.

"So" Captain Grant said, slapping Link on the back, "This one… ten years old... comes charging up through the gates in the training yard, rusty relic of a sword in hand, shouting for all he's worth… and Private Yohan just takes a wooden practice sword and knocks the poor lad on his rear!"

Midna watched from where she gently floated as Link gave the Hyrulean guard-captain a glare and flush of embarrassment. The older man was recounting the day that Link had joined – or had first tried to join, anyway, the ranks of Hyrule's soldiers. He hadn't been allowed in at the tender age when he'd "stormed the castle," but had been sort of informally adopted by the soldiers ever since. Grant had immediately developed an affinity for the strange, brave kid and had taken him into the soldier's quarters of the castle grounds. He hadn't seemed like he had anywhere to go. The boy had carried papers on him – a record of his family line being tied to the Hyrule Knights, thus giving him a birthright to join. When a search for young Link's parents was dispatched, only graves were found, with no other family save an uncle that was also deceased. Link had been living on the castle grounds ever since and training as much as he could, even before he was of age to join the military.

"Why don't you tell your side of it?" Midna asked innocently – or, at least as innocently as someone of her darkish nature could ask.

Link suddenly got a downcast look on his face. Midna had assumed that he was "a man of few words," just like the Hero of her generation had been. Wolves didn't speak so much as they yelped, barked and howled. In his Hylian form, her Link hadn't been much for speech, either – though he did speak sometimes. He also sang beautifully, echoed in his canine form. He had just chosen to be quiet most of the time – perhaps a side-effect from a life among easily-spooked livestock, watching on hillsides, content to chew stems of grass.

"It would have to be through me," said Proxi, the fairy that partnered with the Hero, "and even though I am able to read what is in Link's heart, I am not sure I would be able to adequately convey it all."

Captain Grant hunched over with one arm on his knee and the other hand gently rested on Link's shoulder. "Our Link here… he's what we call an Avox."

"Voiceless" Zelda said sadly, "It's the result of someone cutting the tongue a certain way. No one has any idea how it happened to him. It's a common punishment for slaves in lands that have fallen to darkness – something that monsters do…"

"He doesn't want to talk about it," Proxi added, her voice holding sorrow and warning.

"There was a rash of attacks on some of our outlying villages many years ago…children taken…" Impa muttered.

"Enough." Proxi said. "Please."

"But he yelps and screams," Midna insisted. "He also eats just fine."

"It's rather specialized," the captain explained, "Injury designed to take out speech, to wrap around Hylian, but it doesn't prevent a good strong battle cry, does it, lad!"

Link responded with a hearty "Hiyyyyaa!" as he raised his flaming marshmallow from the fire, holding his roasting stick in the air.

Everyone was laughing again. They calmed themselves down when Darnuia's laughter and belly-slaps were vibrating the area just a little too much.

Link reached into one of the supply bags and pulled out an apple. He passed it over to Midna, who took it into the palm of a large hand formed from the end of her hair. She gave the Hero a fanged smile.

Lana had explained it all to her – that this was the future and that the Hero's Spirit had been reborn. Their mutual enemy – a literal shade of herself, she was sad to say – had been responsible for the recent chaos in her land as well other, earlier time periods. This Cia person had not only put the Twilight Princess into a too-tight-fitting suit of her own skin, she'd messed with the mind of the large Goron chieftain, Darunia, and had tried to prevent their worlds from even occurring according to Fi – a steel-hearted weapon-spirit that knew it was destined to become the Master Sword that the current Hero now carried.

In other words, since Cia had messed with Time so much and critical periods of Hyrule's history, their kingdom and their very universe was headed for a time-crash if she was not stopped.

If they died here, in this "futurescape," so did everything else, the past as well as the present.

And, of course, Midna wanted her original body back. Ever since she'd been hijacked into this little adventure, she'd been giving Lana dirty looks. It doesn't matter that they worked well together in a fight. Midna's very being had been divided between Darkness and Light and she'd been able to keep her mind and herself together.

Perhaps she was resentful merely because she'd been forced to look into the eyes of Link again. Her parting words to him had been "See you later" but now… later was too late. Link was a soul reborn and a definite Hero, but the circumstances of his life were different. He did not remember her at all. Just as Fi referred to him as "not her master, but a master," he was Link, but he was not her Link.

And he would never be. That time was done.

The conversation at camp days before they made the Valley was a reminder of that and perhaps the first time it had really hit Midna. She could not pity Link. She knew enough of his spirit in another life to know that he thought of condescending compassion as being worse than the honest gleam of his blood on a darknut's sword. She did, however, feel a sense of soft sorrow that his soul had gone through such a hard life this time around, apparently.

He was strong. He'd always been strong.

Shadow wolves and shadows of Link went at it on the dressed stone battlefield. No reinforcements came to Midna's aid, although Cia had created her own reinforcements in the form of magical clones. The Twili kept hearing battle reports via Proxi's communication skills, which networked all of them in an informal way.

Captain Grant was having trouble keeping the West Sanctuary. Zelda was still trying to bring Link back to health. Lana was still doing Goddesses know what. Darunia was hammer-smashing enemy troops to keep them out of the battle between dark and dark. Midna, by this point, had summoned a giant wolf, turning her steed into something more solid and whipping up a whirlwind with her hair.

"You surround yourself with poor dark copies of him," Midna taunted. "You know they are only shadows, don't you?"

"It is the only way to keep him near me!" Cia retorted.

"Oh, I know," Midna replied, dodging her spiked whip. "I know because I keep him near me the same way! My wolves…. They're based on Link, too. My Link."

Cia chuckled. All of the Cias chuckled in unison. "Oh, so you play with shadow puppets, too! How pathetic! If I could not win the heart of the Hero, how did you ever expect to stand a chance? Even with your other body, you're nothing but a creature of darkness, like me!"

"I will never be like you!" Midna screamed before grabbing one of the figures with her hair and slamming her to the ground. That Cia, of course, recovered and started lobbing her spiked whip her way.

"He's not even yours this time," the true Cia mocked.

"I know," Midna said as she twitched her ear in response to the pain of a cut delivered by the spiked end of the whip. It had deflected off her helm. The battlefield was mostly clean as the two dark mages had delivered each other only minor physical injuries. This was mostly a battle of magic and shadows had no blood. "From one dark heart to another, the last I saw the soul I knew was before I closed the portal connecting Hyrule and my realm."

"How do you even dare try to tell me you know my pain when it was you who severed the connection?"

"I had to do it to protect him… and to protect all of us." Midna paused for just a moment as she watched Cia conjure another guard of Dark Links. "My Link taught me that the world doesn't revolve around me!"

"A strange sentiment coming from such a vicious-hearted little imp!" Cia sneered. "Why didn't you pursue him as soon as I reopened the portal from your world to Hyrule in your time? You must not have really been loved him as much as you say! Did the pretty little light princess get to him first?"

"And you call yourself a seer and an eternal guardian!" Midna snarled. "You know very well what happened to him and why he wasn't defending Hyrule when you started wrecking up the place!"

"Oh, I know" Cia said, inspecting her nails for a split second before turning to deal with Midna's latest three-wolf conjure. "But why don't you tell me anyway?"

Midna floated in one place as her wolves took care of a pair of duplicates. Even as she began to conjure up a shadow-ball, she sighed.

"He… died..."

She caught up to Link as he led the company of soldiers on-foot down the mountain pass that lead into the Valley. Before he could protest, she caught him with her hair and forced him to face her.

Midna placed a hand on his cheek.

"What's going on here?" Proxi asked, conveying the young man's confusion.

"There are a lot of things I never forgave you for," Midna said, floating before him as he stood still. She removed her hair from his person and gently stroked his cheek with her thumb. "For not listening to me, for calling me a stray cat, for holding all those stupid cats in Castletown when you know I have an allergy….for scooting your rear end on carpet while I was still riding you – at least you were a wolf when you did that… not like the time you were riding across Hyrule Field after drinking too much red potion and you had to stop and forgot that the sun was at your back and let fly all over me when I was in your shadow…."

She continued on, "Not running from Zant when I told you to, not turning those stupid puppets into wood pulp before one of them grabbed my hair, for goosing my butt that one time when we were taking a rest to watch me jump… for singing off-key on purpose as both a man and a wolf…"

Link blinked, making clear that he remembered none of these past-life experiences, even though an underlying trust for her was there in his eyes. Midna caught her breath.

"But the worst thing is that you died young. I saw it… through a scrying portal I'd created in my palace because I wanted to check up on you and Zelda even if I couldn't contact you anymore without endangering your world. I've forgiven you for more than you know. And… those other things, too. Just know this… don't be reckless, okay? If you get killed today, I'll never forgive you. Got it?"

As Midna removed her hand from his face, he gave her a sincere smile and nodded. That's when Link did something unexpected. He leaned forward and grabbed her in a tender hug. The Twili gulped and was swiftly let go.

"He doesn't want you to be too reckless, either," Proxi said on his behalf. "And he says he's sorry for all that stuff he did in another life, too."

"He'd better be!" Midna joked.

She hid her pain as she watched him march on ahead. She slinked back to the rearguard.

"Would you take him from me, too?" Cia yelped. She was down to her original self, her magic reserves for creating counterfeits exhausted. There was some blood spray on the battlefield now.

"No. But I'm not going to let you take him from me! And the rest of us!"

"Isn't it a pity?" Cia laughed. "The Heroes always wind up with the Other… or they die!"

Midna narrowed her eyes, keyed up her hair-fist and slugged her. Watching Cia's body bounce off one of the walls that cordoned off their arena before landing upon the tiles was a little more satisfying than Midna would ever let on.

That last blow had done it.

Before Midna could snap Cia's scrawny neck or kneel to listen to her last words (she honestly did not know what she wanted to do at this point), Lana came running. She gathered Cia into her arms and wept over her. Midna could only look on. The entire leadership of the Hyrulean forces showed up right then. Zelda came, followed by Link who had a little limp in his step but looked a great deal healthier than she had last seen him.

Of course they'd come to help her and to end this battle together. Of course, they had arrived just as the finishing blow was struck.

Cia and Lana spoke. The former seemed surprisingly peaceful, as if a great burden had been lifted from her heart. Midna noted the stunned look on Link's face. Her gaze turned back to Cia's as she took a few final gasps. For just a moment, Midna was glad to have been the one to finish the dark sorceress, not just for the sake of Lana – the too-cheerful light side, or for Link, who probably wouldn't have enjoyed destroying a monster he had a hand in creating, albeit not by intent. Midna was glad for Cia's sake. It would have been a shame if she'd been killed by the one she loved, circumstances aside.

"You know he won't choose you." - Words spoken to Lana, but they stung all the same.

The Twili looked to Fi. "Not my master, but a master."

To Darunia. "The Hero I named my own strapping son after!" – yet not.

To Ruto…who'd found another use for the "Zora Engagement Ring."

To Impa, who was ever in this to protect her Lady Zelda.

To Zelda, linked across space and time to Link in one way or another, even in lives where they didn't fall in love with each other, even in lives that ended too soon.

To Link, whom she would always keep a place in her heart for, wherever his soul might wander.

Midna returned her gaze to Cia as she vanished to once again become a part of her "sister." Between two dark hearts, one chose to be consumed – the other chose to forgive, to move on, and to bless the night.

END.

Shadsie, 2015

(Doing what I can to insert some Link x Midna into Hyrule Warriors. I don't care that his soul always finds Zelda. *Sticks out tongue* ).

I think this is the first and only time I've actually made Link a mute in one of my fan fictions. It is a common fanon, given his lack of speech throughout the series – but I have a lot of reasons for not believing that the Links are actually mute – dialogue trees, on-screen silent lip movements and gesticulating, Wind Waker Link's shouts to statues… Hyrule Warriors had all of Link's "speech" done by Proxi, so I had the thought that the Link of that era might actually be voiceless. It gave me a chance to try out a common fanon. Yes, I ripped off a small piece of The Hunger Games because I wanted to give him a more interesting mysterious past than just having him be the victim of a fever or just born that way, also I just like the term "Avox."