Disclaimer: ...You people should be familiar with this particular power tool. (Translation: You know the drill.) I'm not Valve, I'm not Nintendo, and eventually I'll get over that fact but for now, don't rub it in. D:

Warning: Those who can't stand canon!mutes or certain ships should just...not bother me with OMGWTFBBQ about how Link can talk and Gordon can talk and Ilia's an annoying...whatever. I value your opinion on the story, but I'm not changing a ship or how a character interacts with other characters just because you have your own little fanon you like to coddle. Now that that's straightened out... onward to the actual story! ^.^

Not-sure-what-the-classification-of-this-bit-is: Beta'ed by the lovely Kathryn Shadow. You should give her cookies. They're edible hugs, you know.

From Dusk 'til Dawn

1

It Begins

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

-TS Eliot, The Hollow Men

Midna lingered on the edge of the rock on which her palace, her home, stood. Her long cloak floated on the gentle wind. She looked around at the black flakes of twilight as they fell gently, the way snow fell in—

No. Midna cursed herself for that flash of sentimentality. It had been more than a year since she had left the world of light. More than a year since she had said her goodbye. To ground herself in the present, Midna closed her fiery eyes and inhaled the warm smell of home. She had missed the scent during her involuntary vacation in the other realm; the sweet blend of old parchment and exotic spices.

"Mm..."

Midna allowed herself to savour the moment for a few more seconds before turning back to re-enter the palace. She had stepped outside for some fresh air during a pause in a rather long, unpleasant meeting with some snobby merchants from a far-off part of the realm, and it was time to return to said long, unpleasant meeting. Her mouth twitched in displeasure, but that was life. Her subjects gave bows and murmurs of admiration, and Midna grinned in reply. Her people. She would really never cease to love them, even if some of them were a bit...dim. Her Hylian companion's only experience with her people was her, the dumb ones, and a freakishly insane pseudo-ruler who literally acted like a monkey. The poor boy never realised the depths of the Twili's brilliance...

NO.

The twilight princess delivered herself a mental slap to the face. Just as Midna was about to cross the threshold and enter the palace, a blinding flare of light struck her eyes. She let out a hiss through her teeth as she shielded her vision. Yelps of surprise and discomfort rang in Midna's small ears. That sound hurt almost as much as the light itself.

When the flash ended, Midna lowered her arms...

...and saw a very frightened-looking man, eyes screwed shut, in a black and orange suit of armor and rectangular spectacles. Midna tilted her head, blinking, and reached out to him, but just like that, he was gone.

~—~

Link lay on the hill where the goats had been grazing only an hour before and watched the sun's descent. He smiled at the array of colours in the sky, the softness of the grass, the sheer glory of it all. The breeze playfully lifted a few errant strands of hair across his face. A sigh drifted past his parted lips as he let his hands sweep across the soft, springy grass, careful to avoid those small, odourous evidences of the animals' presence. He would have to clear those up before the next day's grazing. Ah, joy.

Azure eyes reflected the last beams of sunlight, and a pair of strong, rough hands reached behind a blond, hatted head to act as a pillow. Contentment spread across the Hero's tanned features. The sun was setting, the trees had exploded with red, yellow, and orange, the weather was perfect.

And he was going to ask Ilia to marry him. Link had gained Mayor Bo's approval—amidst a deluge of comments of a nature that made the Hero wish he could hide under a rock—and blessing. He had everything planned out. He would take her on a horseback ride to Lake Hylia, stand by her as they looked across the tranquil waters, and...mm. A thrill of joy ran up Link's spine, and a wonderful warmth spread in his chest.

Link sat up, straightened his tunic, and stood to his feet. He brushed himself off and stretched, then headed for the stable. He wanted to make sure the goats had what they needed for the night. The creatures inside were weary and lethargic-looking, which certainly wasn't shocking.

The violet-cloaked merchant, however, was.

Link backpedaled and fell swiftly onto his backside. The man who had appeared in the goats' housing was half a head taller than Link, had high, pronounced cheekbones, and held himself like he owned the whole of Ordona Province. Judging from the rich quality of the stranger's garb, Link wouldn't have been surprised if the man did own at least one town.

The stranger had an unnerving stillness to him, and there was a harsh coldness to the man's sunken ice-blue eyes that only added to the unsettling aura that surrounded him. The Hero of Time looked into those eyes, and the eyes looked into him. The Hylian shivered.

Several beats passed, followed by several more, before the man spoke.

"Hero of...Time. This meeting has been a long...time...in coming."

Link's eyes widened, and he took several crabwalk steps backward. How did this man know who he was?

The man brushed imaginary dust from his cloak, and a smirk tugged at his thin lips. "I see...you are confused. You are right to wonder, Hero. Who is the...man in your stable?" The stranger's voice was just nasal enough to irritate Link, not to mention unbearably patronising. Link had a sudden urge to stab the man.

The merchant spoke Hylian in the same manner Link would expect from a grand, snobbish nobleman, with one exception. His Hylian was spoken as though he wasn't completely sure what Hylian actually sounded like. Every few seconds or so, hesitation furrowed the man's brow. Not the hesitation of anxiety or doubt—the hesitation that had plagued Link as he asked the mayor for Ilia's hand—but the hesitation of knowing the power of a single properly chosen word.

A sigh from the man broke the silence, and the stranger twisted his neck ever so slightly, as if to take care of a crick. "You, of all people," the man continued, "know how the acts of the... few... dictate the future suf-fer-ings of the...many."

Link nodded mechanically, still on his rump.

"Events have been set in mo-tion that can-not be...reversed. Prepare... yourself, Hero." The man lifted his eyebrows, as if expecting Link to have a clue what he was talking about.

Who are you? Link thought. Then he balked.

There on the pack slung over the stranger's right shoulder, visible as the sun on a cloudless day, was embroidered a simple symbol. The thread was gold, a sharp contrast against the deep brown of the pack itself. The man was a merchant, wasn't he?

Why was there a Triforce on his bag? How did a merchant know of the Triforce in the first place?

The man let out an amused "heh", and turned away from Link. He seemed to be intent on walking into the opposite wall, but when he was arm's length from it, he paused and lifted his left hand, fingers curling around the air.

"Oh," he said, head tilting back and to the side as if he had noticed something utterly fascinating in the rafters. "Con-grat-ulations on your upcoming...celebration."

As Link's jaw fell open, the man took two more small steps forward and—surely Link's eyes deceived him—faded from existence. The Hero's mouth formed a comical O of disbelief.

How on Earth—?

~—~

After the first flash of green light, the scientist just shut his eyes and threw his arms over his face in an attempt to defend both himself and his sanity. One nightmarish memory was bad enough, wasn't it?

Oh, crap.

When he thought it was safe to open his eyes, there were more...whatever those things were. Except they were an utterly different—yet equally petrifying—variety of whatever. Oh, dear God, what had he gotten himself into?

Just like that, though, it ended, and the flustered, terrified scientist was back in the test chamber, shaking like a rabbit in winter. For a moment, the poor man merely stood where he was, transfixed by the erratic bolts of electricity shooting in every direction. He eventually jolted himself into awareness and ran for the exit...

...where he found his colleagues, dead and splattered with blood.

Oh God oh God oh God oh God oh God oh God...

The scientist stared at the corpses for several long seconds. He took in the manner in which they gazed up at the ceiling, the tension in their muscles that remained even in death, and the horrific sight of them lying in their own lifeblood. He soon felt his knees weaken. His eyelids slid closed behind his thick-rimmed spectacles, and the unfortunate man let instinct take over.

Gordon Freeman doubled over, clutched his abdomen, and vomited. The acidic taste of bile and that morning's Wheaties filled his mouth, and he could tell that some of the fluid had dribbled onto his goatee. Still he kept his eyes shut, unwilling to look at the bodies of his fellow scientists and dear mother of Tesla, he felt sick just thinking about—oh, God.

He threw up again.

Stomach sufficiently empty, Gordon supposed there was no longer a risk to opening his eyes. He did so. Before bolting full-speed out of the wrecked control room, he extended his hand and lowered the two men's eyelids, equal parts reverence and nausea in the action. He ran for the door, only to find it was firmly shut and locked with a retinal scanner.

D—n it!

Gordon stared at the door in consternation for several moments, as if glaring at it would frighten the thing into opening, and just as he was ready to kick the glass, a bolt of the green lightning shot at the door, barely missing him. It effectively blasted the thing open.

After inhaling deeply, Gordon Freeman steeled himself and stepped into the now-ruined mess that was the Black Mesa Research Facility.

~—~

...What was his name again?

Oh, right, that information had been erased years ago. The prisoner was sure that the automatic confusion that grew in his mind like an amnesiac dandelion whenever he woke up from the simulated sleep his captors forced on him would cease...eventually. Groggily, the prisoner stretched his limbs as far as his spatiotemporal cage allowed. Said cage looked plain enough from the outside; a cylinder of pulsating blue light, a collection of electrodes attached to his shaved crown, and old-fashioned bars were all that seemed to keep him incarcerated. The blue light was a lovely invention his captors had, in fact, stolen from his own people. Why in heaven's name his people had felt the need to invent a micro-prison that could have the speed of all actions inside quickened or slowed on the whim of anyone who knew the controls was beyond him. There was an added accessory that had not previously been part of design of the spatiotemporal cage—every few minutes, electricity pulsed through the prison, his captors' attempt at forcing docility.

He let them think it worked.

The brainwash that had caused this and every other awakening's confusion had occurred several years before he had learned to defend his mind against his captors'... shenanigans. The prisoner pulled a face at the memory of the imagination his captors had shown in their methods of wiping him and bleeding him dry. These days, of course, they barely troubled him. Naturally, a mischievous soldier or two would come every so often to torment him for a few hours, but that happened less and less now. They even let him outside occasionally if it was nice out. The feckless numbskulls were too busy terrorising the fledgling planet that—much to his chagrin—he had introduced them to.

The prisoner's left eyelid twitched in irritation. He frustrated himself sometimes. That, he reminded himself, wasn't your doing, any more than—

"Wake up."

The prisoner rolled his eyes at the garbled voice's command. Surely his neural readings displayed that the pitiful excuse for a rest he had had was now over? The order was so asinine that he felt no need to grace it with a reply. A door across the chamber in which his cage stood opened, and in strutted a trio of the red-eyed Cyclopes known as Elites.

Glad to know I'm still threatening enough to merit such a...special guard, the captive thought with a warm twinge of smugness.

"The Citadel has—"

—blown up, just as planned, the prisoner thought with a mental smirk. Also, I saw it with my own eyes, you... ah, well, I have choice words for single-digit-IQ grunts like yourselves. Intellectually surpassed by amoebas, these sort.

"Subject is fully alert."

Here the prisoner finally let out a very audible sigh of exasperation. He could only take so much idiocy in one five-minute period. Did it really take so long for these pebble-brained thugs to realise he always became "fully alert" within milliseconds of regaining consciousness? The Elite heard the sound, was displeased, and pressed a small green button set into the wall.

When the prisoner had first come, he had assumed that button was a light switch.

"Hngh...ah...hah...angh..."

He had been wrong.

Low groans turned to small yells. Yells turned to screams. And the most exquisite agonies ravaged the prisoner's being as pulse after pulse after pulse of electricity coursed through his body. The screams grew louder. The prisoner's muscles betrayed him and he began to thrash in his prison.

And still he screamed.

A/N: In retrospect, the timeline of this chapter makes little to no sense whatsoever. Feel free to hate me for that, because I'm not apologizing; it was on purpose. -evil grin- I trust it will all make sense to you in the course of...

...well, I'm really not at liberty to say. :D

In the meantime, leave your thoughts and I'll see you lovely people later. -waves-