*Peeks from behind a sheild* um, yeah, I had a bit of free time to finish this up, so I uploaded...are you guys mad at me?

*Evades as many blunt, round objects are projected at her head*

I'm sorry! I promise I'll have more time when school gets out. Please be patient with me until June. Anyway, I'd like to thank:

Chris Lorieag: I promise, no piggy backs, crappy french translations, or shadow shields. Sorry for disappearing like that!

Eternal Lost Girl: Hello, and I'm sorry but...Dark speaks a little en francais...but you still love me, right...? 3

Bigfefan: Yup, it's chapter 3! Again, my apologies for the hiatus.

H2O JustAddBlackWater: My favorite part is O_O too!

9mm Kisses: Haha, confusing others with your bilingual advantages is so much fun! Keep freaking people out, mon amie.

Classified Lemon: OMG!!! I have a fangirl!!!! Ouais!!!! I have reached a precipice...

They completed their journey, arriving at the Temple of time in nigh on three days. As promised, the pair had ridden there on Epona. Link was amused by his shadow's misconception that 'Epona' was the name of the species; it had taken rather a lot of explaining on Link's end to clarify the Epona was the name…of the horse. Epona had stared at dark upon first seeing him, then looked from Link to Dark and back again, seeming confused. She settled for biting both of them and gave them no more trouble.

Horses.

As he stared at the remarkably high archway in the Temple of Time, Link thought back to the first night he and Dark had been camped after a full day of riding and walking interspersely (so as to save Epona; the horse was unaccustomed to carrying two young men).

"Epona…she is a magnificent horse…" Dark commented, poking the campfire idly with a stick.

"Some villagers have gone so far as to remark that she's the finest in this land; however, I believe they exaggerate," Link replied, flushing slightly for the (ridiculous) reason that he actually sought approval from the evil son-of-a-bitch he was traveling with.

"It's probably true. After all, her rider is the finest man in this land; for the finest man, the finest horse. It's only fitting."

Link flushed so dark a red that he hoped the shadow didn't have night vision with which to see him.

"You exaggerate."

"I never exaggerate."

Link visibly twitched at the falsehood of this statement. Not five minutes ago the shadow had said that he'd been bitten by something, and the wound was bleeding profusely…and excreting something green. Inspection had revealed that the wound was not bleeding even the slightest. He'd been exaggerating, and, consequently, had been exaggerating by saying he never exaggerated.

"I thank you for the complement, however undeserved it may be. Now, though, we should rest. We've two days' journey ahead."

"I don't sleep," the shadow blurted, and Link gazed at him in an ogling fashion.

"Come again?"

"I don't…sleep. I don't know why, but it doesn't matter. Sleeping is a waste of time, anyway. I'd rather stay awake and look at the lights up there in the sky, and listen to all the noises out there. Feel the wind. I've never experienced this before; back in the Room of Illusions, it was nothing but water and mist and unseen walls," he explained, looking at the sky in a melancholy fashion.

They sat in silence for a bit, Link (not having much experience as emotional support) not knowing what to say.

"As you please," he relented finally, "you can keep watch for danger, I suppose."

The shadow nodded, and as Link fell asleep, he thought he heard the brunet growling to himself:

"Anything that tries to hurt my Hero is not danger. It is in danger."

Link realized he must have been blushing at the thought of the incident, because the shadow became frisky and pulled the blond into his chest from behind. Link cried out in shock as Dark lifted him off the ground and swung him in a small arc from side to side before releasing him.

Link was blushing and spluttering in indignation, but to his chagrin the brunet seemed unaffected.

"Wh-what on this good Earth possessed you to do something so…so bloody forward?"

Dark simply smiled, and looked so much like an overjoyed young child that Link wondered what the shadow's motive had been. Link shook it off and walked up to the Master Sword's dias, preparing to strike the stone. The shadow wrapped his arms tightly around the blond. Link hesitated.

"Problem?" The shadow queried, tensing a bit.

"I only wonder…if you are able to follow me through time's flow."

The shadow's red eyes flashed and his pupils shrank nearly out of existence. However, his words were even:

"Who's makin' the rules around here? I don't see any signs around that say, 'No Black-Garbed Fags Allowed in Time's Flow'."

Link stiffened at his language, but couldn't help but agree. But his intuition still nagged at him.

"I'll just have to hold on tight," the shadow chuckled, although Link could sense he was a bit anxious. The brunet held on tightly—if not for dear life—and Link himself didn't know what would happen if the other man lost his grip.

Link struck the Master Sword's pedestal, and a stream of blue-grey light rose around them. The force was so much that it blew Link's tunic straight up, revealing his breeches, and he caught a whisper of the shadow formulating a mischievous idea; but he didn't act on it, possibly afraid to fall away from the other. The stream stopped; Link was a child again.

And he was alone on the dais.

The last thought he could form before buckling under the crushing pain in his head was that his shadow would be in pain as well.

Sheik had seen everything that had happened. He wasn't spying on them, necessarily; he'd just been making sure Link didn't do something klutzy and screw up.

Well…that was a portion of the inspiration. He was really there because he was curious about Link's doppelganger, not to mention worried about what this being's substance could possibly be. After all, Link had entered a deadly temple infested with monsters and emerged with an almost-twin whom it caused him pain to be away from. It was driving Sheik mad with curiosity, actually, and he was starting to think that perhaps he should follow Link through the next temple, just in case next time the blond came out with a triplet.

This is what he was thinking when they'd struck the Master Sword's pedestal. Before he could stop them, the stream of time's flow engulfed them. Ugh! Despite his efforts, Link had done something stupid. Didn't he know that only one person could wield the Master Sword and control time? Couldn't he even guess…?

He had to stand by for the few seconds that the stream continued, but when it dispelled, only one of the two was left. Dark. And he looked…

…like he was dead.

Dark lay on the floor, face down. He couldn't even move. Link was gone; he was empty. However, his own feeling of void was not his most prevalent concern. He recalled the night before, when they'd been camped; what he'd said as Link fell asleep that he knew the other had heard…

I promise we'll never feel that emptiness again. I'll never get too far away. I won't let anything hurt you, not even myself.

The shadow cringed from the sharp pang of overwhelming grief he felt at having broken his promise. He knew, too, from the last time it had happened, that his Hero was experiencing the same pain…three fold.

He was overcome with guilt, though he couldn't place the emotion (having never felt it before). His lungs burned, his heart beat very quickly; he broke into a cold sweat; then his heartbeat slowed gradually and his breathing shallowed. He was becoming weaker every moment, though he couldn't think what to do to change that.

He felt a strong hand smack his upper back, causing him to exhale. He then inhaled. That proved to be a mistake, as it caused the hole in his chest to hurt even more. He held his breath again; he was smacked again. He became annoyed. Who the bloody hell though they had the right to go around smacking him? He was trying to feel less pain, dammit! The ebony-haired man rolled over on his back to confront his attacker; he was met with another pair of ruby eyes. So, it was Spandex-Lad, Pasty-Face, Mr. Pansy-Ass Pretty Boy (a.k.a. Shiek) smacking him. Somehow the shadow was not surprised.

"What is wrong with you?" he demanded, none to happy with the shadow's plan to stop breathing.

"I'm trying not to hurt the hole in my chest, thank you," the Dark retorted blandly, wincing when he inhaled.

"There's no hole in your chest. Don't be childish. I know it hurts you two to be separated, but Link will be back. Could you at least find something to do until he returns?"

"But it's so boring without him…" he almost whined it, but couldn't seem to feel any emotion. Dark was certain that the part of his chest that usually felt that emotion had been cut away. "Without Link, there isn't anything, really…it's just like being back in that soggy pit of a room…" he sighed.

Spandex-Lad was staring. Again.

STARING!!!!

There was a long pause as Pasty-Face stared at him, and Dark felt he should have been angry about this turn of events. He was, however, unable to feel anger. Pretty Boy finally spoke.

"Come with me to Kakariko (A/N: I've been reading to many stuff, I almost wrote 'Cockariko' O_O). That is the location of the next temple. Perhaps, while Link staves off evil in the past, you can do the same in this time until he returns. We can, at least, try to keep any major-league demons from rising forth from the earth to exact their fiery revenge on those that banished them. And, when Link returns, everything should be right again…or, I should say, as right as it had been before he left."

The shadow was unenthusiastic about all the 'we's and implications of teamwork and happy-peppy-togetherness with Pretty Boy. It was simply wrong. When Dark didn't answer immediately, Sheik continued:

"If you would like to accompany me to Kakariko, choose 'Okay'. If you would rather tell me to fuck off, select 'Fuck Off!'."

Dark contemplated, and decided that anything was a step above staying there alone. He selected Okay.

They arrived at Kakariko. Dark was quiet for the larger portion of the journey. Sheik wasn't as nice to be with has Link. He also wasn't as nice, period. When he explained things, he was condescending, and tended to reiterate the things Dark knew and was too vague about the things he didn't know. When the shadow asked why he was like that, the sheikah replied saying that it was 'in the binary code'. See previous documentation of the fact that Sheik is confusing and vague. But the shadow couldn't find a reason to be upset about it; rather, he felt much the way he did before he met his Hero; empty, unresponsive, emotionless. Perhaps the hole in him was his heart, and it was, without his knowledge, in Link's chest rather than his own.

He and Sheik avoided each other for the most part; Sheik would occasionally assign him pointless and tedious objectives to complete, which Dark could not bring himself to whine about, but at a point asked for an explanation for:

"Why exactly must I do these things? I mean, why does a woman with cuckoo allergies take on the responsibility of raising them? How does a cuckoo manage to hide inside of a sealed wooden box? Lastly, what kind of idiot pays useless employees to not build people's houses?"

Sheik answered with bullshit about side quests, which were, apparently, 'innovative and non-linear'. The shadow had shaken his head and left. Sheik was so annoying, it wasn't even humourous any more.

About three days after their arrival, it happened.

Something interesting.

Something interesting and non-linear (and a little innovative, too).

The whole fuckin' village was up in flames. Dark felt many emotions at once; excitement, fear, irony; he realized that Link must have returned to his same time period. However, his thoughts were obstructed by the realization that children were in the village; he couldn't leave them! He wasn't sure, quite, why he couldn't leave them. He didn't even like the little brats! For the three day's he'd been there, the little dears had thrown things at his head (fruit, vegetables, rocks), and ultimately introduced more difficulty into his existence.

Dark blamed his situation on Link's goddamned bleeding heart.

The shadow then ran to every damn house and made absolutely certain that no-one was left to die. And, fortunately, no-one was left to die…

…except Dark.

He was trapped, unfortunately, behind a wooden beam, which had fallen between he himself ad the exit after he'd rescued a village brat. The little bitch got out all right though…why did that make him feel better? Dark hated that kid, he'd thrown rocks at his hairdo!

The poor shadow stood in the corner, trapped; all he could think was:

Better than that room. Better than that room. Better than that room…

It was better; Mr. Sympatheic Hero ran to the rescue, as he well should have, considering it was his bleeding heart that had put the shadow in danger.

He ran into the burning place, flames licking at his clothes. Reaching the beam quickly, he revealed a fun-looking toy: a hammer.

He smashed the fallen beam in one strike. Dark immediately liked the hammer.

Link took the brunet's hand, and they ran from the house. The situation was no better outside, however. People were working their asses off, trying to put out the flames, though everyone knew it was hopeless. The flames were abnormal; it was as if they knew precisely how to spread; as if they knew just how to maneuver themselves to destroy as much life as possible.

Link rushed to Sheik, who was glaring intensely into the well. The shadow followed, and asked:

"Link…did you fail?"

Link was about to speak, but Sheik cut in, which caused Dark to twitch involuntarily.

"I should say he didn't. Rather, I'd say he did succeed; but in doing so he had to break a rather important seal, and evil managed to get through. Not the first time this has happened," he finished dryly. Link looked down, biting his lip. Dark could feel Link's guilt from where he stood; Link had told him the tale of how he'd entered the sacred realm to stop Gannon, which had only made way for the Evil King to break in. He was so overcome with guilt—he'd nearly cried when he'd recalled it. The ruby-eyed shadow wasn't in the least bit happy that Sheik had mentioned the event.

Dark was about to unleash a stream of passionate curses at Pretty Boy (yes, he's Pretty Boy again now), but the fiend was suddenly thrown into the air and rotated in circles. Dark felt that it would have been far more humourous if he'd been responsible for it, but still was secretly smug at Pansy-Ass's current position. Mr. Sympathetic Hero was not so glad, though.

Pretty Boy let out a cry of shock (and hopefully pain), and Link cried out in frustration at his own helplessness to aid him. Suddenly, Pretty Boy was thrown several yards away.

Link, ever the bleeding heart, rushed to his side.

Dark rushed with him, not in any way intending to let him out of his sight.

They stopped by the fallen spandex-garbed man. Dark felt something approaching, and knew Link did as well, because the blond knelt before Pretty Boy, shield raised, even though he had no idea what it was.

Link was loyal to everyone but himself.

Dark was loyal to no one but his Hero—his Saviour.

The darker man grabbed the unconscious Pretty Boy and Mr. Bleeding Heart Hero and tossed them away with all the strength he had. He witnessed Link's expression of shock (and what was under his tunic, too, due to the angle at which he fell), and smirked.

The lights in Dark's consciousness were extinguished.