Silverlocke980 here. More Twilight Princess goodness!
Definitely romantic. Why?
...You see the ending?
It's...
"SHOWTIME!"
Moved by Light
Why is it, she thinks, sometimes, that I am Shadow moved by Light? That's not the way it goes. We all know this. The stories- stories my people told, lovers of night and shadow- have told us a thousand times that darkness corrupts, that shadow entreats and drags the Light down into itself.
(Her people being her people, this is not usually a bad thing for all involved. When one is Darkness, Darkness becomes the new Light.)
But here he is, stoic, unmovable, a man raised among goatherds who is worthy of the mantle of a king. Link is noble; she can think of no other word for it.
(Or perhaps courageous, and strong, and brave; but he'd reject the first and last out of modesty and laugh at the second. Strength is of Ganondorf, not the Triforce of Courage's bearer.)
He is everything she has never heard Light to be. When they are under attack, he rages and roars and fights like death itself taught him where to put his sword blows. When he is merely traveling, he's a great listener, if quiet. He walks as if each step had its own peculiar weight, a gravity that hangs around everything he does. Link is legendary.
(Midna wonders, in her more sarcastic moments, if she measures up. She's only a couple feet of deformed Twili, after all.)
Link is noble. He has let the green-skin king (Midna does not know the names of Light's races and doesn't want to) survive, time and time again, and when she asked him why, he said "Because he doesn't know any better." She thinks he should just kill him, but when it was over, his survival helped them, didn't it? Because after the last almost-fight (neither of them really putting much heart into it), the greenskin gave them the strange, special key to the lock on the front door on the castle of Hyrule. Link has saved people the world over and he has never once stopped fighting.
She loves him.
It nearly broke her when she found that out, while he slept one night, her watching him wit the kind of wonder usually reserved for cosmic events or miracles.
(She was watching him sleep and thinking his hair was the color of sunlight.)
She couldn't love him. He was a Hylian.
(He was a child of light. If her mother found out, it would kill her poor heart.)
So the next day she was unusually quiet and he did the one thing that could make her day worse.
He asked her what was wrong.
Why did he have to ask? she thought, because if he'd not noticed, it would have made her life a lot easier, to pretend that he was an ignorant bastard who noticed nothing. But as it was, he did notice, and the only thing to do now was lie about it.
" Nothing's wrong," she replied, and he'd just stopped, turning to look at her with those king's eyes.
Now what do I do? "I'm thinking about home," she said, lying carefully and guiltily under his gaze. She wanted to cringe up and confess her crimes like a small child before a vicious adult but there was no way she was just going to admit it to him. Even as love-addled as she was, she understood that Light and Shadow are not meant to be.
(But what about Light and Twilight? her mind asked, and she could not reply.)
He kept looking at her, gaze boring at the truth, and she just looked defiantly back, praying for a monster to swoop out of the sky and eat him. Or something.
And her prayer was heard, apparently, because a giant bird chose that moment to eat Epona. Link turned towards his horse's terrified screams and nailed it in one movement with his bow, an easy task, but its flock heard the death cry and chased them and they spent the next few minutes running away as fast as equinely possible. Midna was just glad to be forgotten.
He was so beautiful, though, as he ran away, green cap flowing like a ludicrous wind pennant and golden hair leaking out like the hidden laughter of sunlight.
She had no idea what she was going to do.
--
When she finally figured it out, she was standing in front of the mirror she and Link had put together with sweat and magic. The desert wind blew granules of sand around her feet. They had no deserts where Midna came from, and she'd enjoyed journeying in this place of sand and sun and the endless will of life to colonize it regardless.
She would never see a desert again.
She was saying goodbye to her weaker Other (for who was Zelda but a mismatched Midna, much less spiritual strength commanding her to bow to Zant rather than fight him?) and the wind caught her words and carried them off. She was saying empty things. The last words between worlds should be calm and collected and very, very respectful. Not the truth of the matter.
(Why didn't you fix it, you bitch! Midna wants to scream. Why did you make me come over her to fight your battles, save your kingdom, when all I wanted to do was save mine? I've fallen in love here, and it's all your fault)
So she looks at Zelda and says meaningless pretty words. Link steps up as the wind dulls its tempo and all word dies. She is alone and she is weak and all she can think about is Link..
I'm so sorry.
She says a few last things that mean nothing. She can't say important things. She has been more than moved by Light- she has been crushed by it, and words fail her.
She runs away.
Throughout her life, this may be the one thing she keeps in her mind.
She ran away.
--
It is some time later, almost three years, when she meets him again. She is on her throne, in the mighty hall of her mighty castle. She is judging her supplicants and giving them what she can of aid.
(Time is no longer for Twili than for Hylian, and in three years, her people have forgotten Zant. She hasn't.)
He is the third supplicant in row fifteen. She calls for her next supplicant and the magic her soldiers use to bar passage to her throne is lifted and in he walks.
She almost chokes in recognition.
He can't have crossed over.
He didn't. She is looking at a Twili, angled face and crimson eyes and the blue shaded skin of her people, peering out from under a dark blue helmet. But he's Link more than anything- the same gravity, the nobility, the heart of a king.
She just keeps looking, and he smiles a soft sad smile and says, " Midna, we need to talk."
She tells her other supplicants to go home with all the grace of a flopping fish and takes him straight to her master bedroom- leading him by the hand like a child past her astounded guards- to talk.
--
" Link!" she screams, and it's almost like a shout. Joy, she thinks, is her current emotion. She doesn't know.
(Shock and awe are warring with it in her mind.)
He laughs. " Yes, it's me," he says, and he's smiling like he always did, not an easy smile but a beautiful one. She once thought she would kill for that smile.
(And that was when she was an imp.)
She can't believe it. She sways on her feet. The hell is happening? She reaches out to grab something in her too-cluttered, too-clustered bedroom.
He reaches out to grab her, and with his other hand, whips off his helmet. Under it, spilling out in long straight lines, is perfect, golden hair.
No Twili was born with golden hair.
She swoons, but he catches her on the way down and does the one things she always wanted.
He kisses her.
--
The Twilight Princess got her Prince; Link had pleaded with Farore, and she saw fit to grant his wish. The way was hard, though, as all great gifts generally are; but he was eventually reborn as a Twili, fully formed, on the outskirts of her royal city.
And he was born with sunlight in his hair.
Moved by Light, Shadow lived happily to the end of its days.