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Do not make it worse. Do not give him more to grieve.
That was the oath Midna swore when the yearning in her heart became too much to ignore. She’d kept it when they’d huddled by the hearth in Snowpeak Ruins, when they’d soaked in the hot spring of the Elde Inn, even when she woke up in his arms before the gates of Hyrule Castle.
Every time she came close –and sols, did she come close– she reminded herself of the truth: in Link’s lifetime, she would be as fleeting as the twilight, and anything she did to warm their evening would sentence him to a colder night. She would not give him false hopes of what they could be. She wouldn’t, she couldn’t-
And then at the very end, she fucked it all up. Was it because they’d defeated the final scourge on both their realms? The shared relief to have survived it all? Or was it the way he ran to her, when her true form stunned him into silence, and those blue eyes traced her curves the way she wished he’d do with those clever hands…
What did it matter? She still kissed him all the same.
She tasted blood and bruises, sweat and tears. He held her so desperately, shaking on his feet as if he might collapse without her, as the wounds he’d suffered in her absence stained her roaming fingertips.
Even though the old her was willing to sacrifice him for her own ends, that selfish imp had been right about one thing: it would be cruel to make him depend on her as more than a means to an end. She was supposed to be an asset, a tool, just as he was to her. When his land had been restored and his friends saved, she was never supposed to be the next reason why he picked up a sword and kept on fighting…
But like a curse, she kept stealing everything he gave her: his lips, his touch, his heart.
That last part, she couldn’t give in return, because it was the only part of the oath she could still keep.
At the ball celebrating the end of the war, Link had insisted on dancing with her. Well, more like he’d asked and Midna had been weak-willed enough to agree.
They glided across a floor still webbed with cracks, her ebony dress flaring to tease the teal lining to the local nobility. When she twirled into Link’s arms, she almost forgot all the reasons why she should’ve refused him. His hand on her hip, thumb blessing her with sweet caresses. The way he’d laugh every time he’d stumble, not quite so quick on his feet while he was still recovering.
And she laughed too, as she caught him in a dip, until she met his eyes, and the illusion cracked.
Once, Yeto told his wife to find her true beauty reflected in his adoring eyes, but that’s not what Midna found in Link’s – her skin was bronze, her hair a darker auburn, her sclarea white. She’d just gotten her true form back, and already, she had to hide it away.
Zelda had told her she didn’t have to do this, that she would be proud to introduce Midna to her kingdom as both a friend and an ally to Hyrule, but for one blessed with Wisdom, she had been far too naïve.
Did she not see the way her guards tightened their hold on their spears as Midna walked with her arm-in-arm? Did Zelda not notice how when she and Link were served supper last night, they had steaks seared to perfection where Midna’s was almost raw, with drippings of blood passed off as a ‘red wine sauce’.
To her credit, Zelda did observe the probing questions of her Minister of Foreign Affairs: how could the Twili allow Zant to rise, what were the capabilities of their military, and how long it would take them to recover from this ‘dreadful war’? Zelda had ‘congratulated’ the minister on learning all he needed to about the Twili’s plight so Hyrule might offer aid in the rebuilding effort, to which he smiled as if it brought him physical pain, and said, “Actually, I was hoping the twilight princess might offer us aid. It was her people who instigated these dark times, was it not?”
So even though Zelda threw this ball in honour of the hero and the twilight princess, Midna chose to wear a disguise. Let these little light dwellers dance atop shadow king’s defeat, ignorant to the shadow queen-to-be dancing among them. This way, Midna wouldn’t be treated like a snake in a den of rats.
But it hadn’t worked. Midna held Link, both panting, in a crater of scandalised faces as the last few notes of the chamber orchestra screeched into silence. Behind cupped hands and feathered fans, whispers rose, crawling down her back like the invisible rats of the arbiter’s keep.
And to seal her place here like melted wax, Zelda’s Captain of the Monster Control Unit turned to the Castle Town Mayor and, as if she didn’t expect Midna to know less than ten words of Hylian, said, “Well, she isn’t the most offensive person on the guest list.” She kept fanning herself with a coal leather paddle made from a Twilit kagarok’s wing. “I’m only grateful the Queen didn’t deliver on her threat to invite the shadowbeast princess.”
Link snapped towards the captain like a whip. “You wanna say that again?”
The mayor’s snicker died, but the captain narrowed her eyes. “Are you still not over your beloved succubus?”
He ripped away from Midna, storming towards the captain as if he was the bulblin king who had kidnapped Colin, but when he reached out to seize her starched collar, he cried out in pain and stumbled to his knees.
The crowd hissed and winced, and the captain flung up her hands to prove she was armed with nothing but her fan – she wasn't the reason why Link was clutching his side, dark spots seeping through the green velvet.
But Midna was. Who was it who had pushed him too far as they danced, who made this scene, who did nothing to stay his wrath against someone who slighted her?
There no point hiding now. Midna strode to Link's side and commanded her hair to coil around him. Some people gasped, others screamed, and just in periphery, the captain brandished her leather paddle like a sword.
Her hair, now returned to its sunset shade, gently lifted her wincing wolf into her cool grey arms. Someone demanded she 'release him, foul witch!' but they were as worthy of note as a fly.
As she carried him towards the nearest doorway, Link leaned against her collarbone, murmuring an apology about failing to protect her again. Fool, this was not his failure to mope over. Midna smiled down at him, but the moment she fixed her eyes on the exit once more, the soldiers on guard crossed their spears, barring her passage.
Midna scowled. “Can’t you idiots see he’s bleeding?”
“We will take him to the healer,” one of the soldiers declared. “You will be taken in for questioning.”
These cowards were far too emboldened now that someone else had done the job of saving Hyrule. “Oh, you want to question me,” Midna sneered, “and not your boss who started it?”
The same guard glared at her. “You were the one to disguise yourself and trespass, twilight princess.”
Oh, for the love of sols!
“How could she trespass on a ball hosted in her honour?” Queen Zelda emerged from the parting crowd, her crown glistening in the candlelight. “I suggest you let her pass, soldiers, or else I may not forgive your desertion during the twilight invasion after all.”
The soldiers jerked their spears back into rest, their glares on Midna breaking away to look into the distance, as useless as the suits of armour lining the hall ahead.
In their moonlit bed chambers, Link leaned back on the silken sheets as Midna snipped his last stitch. “Bunch of stuck ups, that’s what they are,” he grumbled. “You heard Zelda: she won’t let anyone stay for long if they keep running their mouths like that.”
“Their positions are too secure,” Midna said dully. “She can’t dismiss an elected official, and Zant’s invasion has left the Monster Control Unit in tatters. Every one of them will hold the same grudge against me.”
“Against Zant.”
“Gods, Link, have you spared one thought for how I appear to everyone else?” She banished the needle and thread into her pocket void. “All anyone witnessed was a young man in a green tunic running around and solving everyone’s problems all on his own. Then when the great evil from the twilight realm is defeated and their ruler is saved, suddenly the princess of the enemy nation appears out of nowhere to be paraded around as yet another hero of Hyrule they’re supposedly indebted to.” Midna sighed. “I’d probably think I was some evil seductress, too.”
“But you’re not. If we just kept getting the story straight–”
“Link, please.” She grazed her nails against his new stitches. “Don’t go fighting any more battles for me.”
“Fine, but only until I’ve healed from the last one.” He shifted closer, nudging her fingers to splay across his warm skin, a soft hum rumbling from the back of his throat.
Midna huffed, amused. “Is this what calms you down?” She ran her hand up his bare chest, over fresh stitches and fading scars, and as he arched into her palm, it was as if she was commanding him to draw breath.
When she threaded her fingers through his hair, he looked up at her through half-lidded eyes, a challenging smirk playing on his lips. “Surely an evil seductress like you knows what kind of effect you have on me?”
And surely he knew what kind of effect he had on her, bare-chested and leaning back against the bedsheets. But the stitches crossing his flesh reminded her why she shouldn’t. Her oath was in tatters, barely held together by whatever fraying threads of conscience a succubus like her still had.
She pulled her hand away. “You have enough wounds already.”
He lifted a hand to her face, thumb tugging back her bottom lip in a way that made her breath waver. “I don’t think my collection will be complete until I’ve felt those fangs of yours.”
Damn the way those words pulled her in, her lips parted to invite his tongue inside. As he ran it over her fangs, he hummed softly, and she sharpened it into a shudder when she nipped. She parted from him, licking the tang of blood off her teeth and smiling. “Is it complete now?”
His answer was almost lost within his desperate breath. “No…” He raised himself to catch her lips again, but the moment she caught him wincing, she pushed him back down.
“You really want to get yourself into more trouble?” she teased.
He grinned as he threaded his fingers through her updo. “You’re gonna have to keep me out of it.” In a single motion, he pulled her hair free of its clasp, letting it cascade and pool beside his handsome face.
A better woman would be stronger than her yearning, her aching bud, and she would find a way to salvage her vow, but Midna was not a better woman. She could resist the pull of the fused shadows, but she could never resist him.
When she rushed forward to kiss him again, she felt the cracks of her vow split wider, and wider still with each garment she snapped away.
She still did the half-responsible thing – ensuring he didn’t strain himself further, by pinning him between her thighs, his wrists against the sheets with her hair. Let her be the one to tease, to guide him inside her, to bring him towards one last gift. (She doesn’t need anything in return – she doesn’t deserve it.)
But the more she restrained him, the more emboldened he became. He refused to let her thrusts go unchallenged, to make her work to keep him in her sunset shackles, to let her fangs tease his ear without lunging for her with his canines. When she first met him in that cell a year ago, she told him there was no need to bite, but gods, did she need him to bite.
The way he writhed against her was a serenade against her bare breasts, bringing her higher towards her peak, but she was determined to reach to his first. She had to, because if she was weak enough to toy with him like this, then it was better to give him everything and leave herself starving.
She almost had him –she wasn’t sure how she could tell, she just did– but he snatched victory when his teeth sank into her secret weak spot, just between her collar and neck. Her vision went brighter than Lanayru’s blinding light, pulse after pulse of pleasure burning through her. Did she scream different or the same?
Just like last time, she came to against his warmth, dewy skin in place of water-logged fur. He trembled beneath her as he did then, but for something more pleasant than exhaustion. For once, she dared to believe that maybe, just maybe, she did him right.
Then he drew his arms from her unravelled locks and pulled her closer. Her thigh slipped against something wet and warm, but not the kind that belonged to a moment like this. Her fingertips crept down his side – she had ripped open his stitches again.
“I love you,” he said breathily, desperately, as if they were the final words he would utter on the mortal plain, as if no one was more worthy of them than her.
Fuck.
She was worse than the monsters who had made him bleed like this a hundred times before, because at least they weren’t liars. They bared their bows and clubs and made their intentions abundantly clear.
Not Midna. She had made him submit to her not with a beating, but with a betrayal that would shatter him in the morrow’s twilight.
To say she loved him too would only deepen that betrayal, allowing her to steal more from him like the succubus she was, so she gripped a fistful of pillow beside his head and disguised her cry of anguish as one of pleasure, as if his declaration had pushed her over another edge.
And in a way, it had.
When Midna tossed the seventh attempt at writing a letter into the fireplace, she finally realised where she went wrong.
She sat at the desk, fingers tangled in her hair, as the dawn of the final day crept up her back. Another half-written letter chided her now, scrawled with excuses and pleas and whatever else she thought might convince him she wasn’t worth grieving.
But who was she to dictate how he was supposed to feel?
He always had a way of ruining her plans – first, it was plots of betrayal, then of self-sacrifice, and finally, those of self-misery. He cherished her when she couldn’t cherish herself, even when she tried to jerk his leash down another path, even when she made him bleed.
But as grateful as she was for all the ways he’d changed her, it was also dangerous. If she told him what she planned to do when twilight fell upon Hyrule, if she gave him even the smallest window to fight for her, he’d win far too easily, and she’d let both worlds burn for his kiss.
She’d already made it worse. She’d already given him more to grieve.
All she could offer him now was closure.
The quill scratched across the parchment, a race against the sunbeams filling the page like an hourglass. No more excuses, only the truth. No more pleading with him to let her go, only the reasons why there was no future where they could live together in peace. No more wallowing in her guilt – he could cherish or curse her memory however he pleased.
But to the Gods of this world, Midna imbued a prayer: please, let this letter be enough, and may he never waste his life chasing her. It can be a part of Their oh-so-divine plan to keep their worlds apart, just as They decreed long ago.
Wax dripped against the parchment like tears, but when she pressed it, it was as if she’d just sealed away a great scourge – all those thoughts no longer crowded her mind, all those things she wished she could say would still reach him when she was gone.
Her only regret was that she couldn’t say it all now, not when her heart was so tender and selfish and determined to find any excuse to betray her duty to her realm.
But if she wanted to keep her vow, that wasn’t done through holding him at a distance, through biting back her words of affection. If he thought loving her was worth the sharpness, the struggle, the pain, then he deserved the softness, the honesty, the best of her.
When she stood to crawl back into the silken sheets, his eyes were already half-open, dull with disappointment – he had seen through her last night.
But as she sank against the mattress, she smiled and reached out to cup his cheek. “I love you, too,” she whispered.
Later, when she was to that tear towards the glowing mirror, whatever expression he’d have would haunt her, but this one –with his eyes drifting closed and a soft smile dawning on his lips as he lay a hand over hers– was something she hoped to reminisce about until the end of her days.
In this moment, she had blessed him with the peace he’d fought so hard for, even if it was as fleeting as the twilight.