Copyright disclaimer: You think a wash up like me could afford to own the Legend of Zelda franchise? Dude. Get your eyes checked.

CHAPTER 26: Cloud boy and the thunderstorm

I stared at the screen in anger, confusion, and horror as Three slid his mask off his face slowly, revealing the face of my senior.

"Link, you're probably confused, and you've got to let me explain—so just ask him for the passcode and come out here."

My phone gave a warning beep that it was shutting off, and I rushed out a sentence to Ghirahim, who'd gone silent on the line.

"My phone is going to die so please get me out of here before I break down the door and commit murder."

"There's an escape route through the closet. It will take you underground and to 34th street. Take a left at the intersection and meet me at the—" he said, as my phone cut off.

The inside of my head was complete anarchy, as my rationality staged coups and defected to some unknown rebel group that shot synapses wildly. I put my phone in my pocket and stared at Pipit through the screen and pressed the intercom button so that he could hear me.

"You are a traitor," I growled, barely holding my composure through my gritted teeth. "I will never surrender to the likes of you."

I walked to Ghirahim's bedroom-sized closet, seething, and dug my way through his shoe organizers until I found a small door with thick, blocky letters in a language I'd never seen before printed across it. I swung it open and there was a high, winding stairwell heading downwards, with dim, anxiety-inducing red lights painting everything in blood. Without a second thought, I absconded, shutting the door behind me and sprinting down the one hundred and fifty three flights of stairs.

He'd killed innocent people. He, who took an oath to devote himself to justice. He killed Horwell. He built bombs. He killed for the sport of it. He betrayed us—My thought process was at its optimum rate of degeneration, so it was at the 70th floor that I turned it off. The physical strain that I felt on my body disappeared, my body became light, and I was invincible. I flew down the stairs and after another ten minutes, I came upon a rusty metal door. Cars rushed on the other side, and I threw my strength into it to push it open. I was in a shaded alleyway, and I didn't remember where Ghirahim told me to go. My mind was absolutely void of thought, a bleak cavity of obsidian.

I approached the sidewalk, aiming to be able to see Ghirahim, but the disorienting sea of people pushed me back. Under my breath I muttered, "hurry and find me." I watched the air from my voice materialize in the cold air, float into the sky, and dissipate.

"Link," Ghirahim whispered fiercely, grabbing me by the shoulder and pulling me to him. He sighed into the top of my head. "I thought something had happened to you," he said quietly. "We've got to go now, Link, they will be looking for you." He took my wrist and began walking, and I stumbled.

"What is it...?" He trailed off, turning to me. He stopped dead when he looked at me. "Your pupils are so dilated that your eyes are completely black."

I said nothing, because my mind had turned off.

"Link, what's wrong?" he asked, moving closer to me. "What happened?"

I said nothing, because my mind had turned off. He took me by the shoulders and shook me. Snap out of it, he said.

I felt something swelling up in my lungs. My pulse raced, and the air didn't make it very far inside of me.

"I can't breathe," I choked, shaking. I gasped for air, clawed at my throat, and sank to the ground.

Ghirahim's hand was on my back; he told me to watch him and do as he did. He took a slow, deep breath in, and counted to three. He exhaled. I attempted, and felt my throat closing. I panicked, and he took my hands in his and continued leading his three count breathing pattern. I watched his chest rise and fall, and after many failed attempts, breathed as he did.

"You—I, I don't know what happened," I stuttered.

"Anxiety attack?" he suggested, pulling me to my feet. I was still shaking substantially, and he picked me up. "If you feel like that again, tell me. That look in your eyes was unsettling and I do not want to see it again."

He walked down the alleyway with me in his arms and, after a series of turns, he set me down at a dark green painted door. The flickering light above buzzed incessantly, and he pulled out a key ring with a wooden figure keychain and four keys. He unlocked the door and quickly locked it behind us, turning on a lamp. The apartment was covered from floor to ceiling in books, with melted down unlit candles strewn about.

"Where is this?" I asked. I felt some semblance of familiarity with it, but I couldn't place it.

"I lived here when I first came to Skyloft," he said. "Don't touch anything. We won't be staying here very long." He withdrew into a back room, and I set down the heavy backpack that had been weighing down on my shoulders for quite some time.

I walked closer to the aged, yellowing books, reading their titles. They were all in Ancient Hylian, and as I approached them, my ears began to ring. I backed away and sat on the floor, covering my eyes. Ferris wheels of phosphenes danced and spun on my closed eyelids.

Ghirahim crouched in front of me.

"What are you doing?" he inquired, searching my face.

"My ears have been ringing a lot recently, and I get migraines when I see certain things. It's every time that I get deja vu."

Something flickered in his eyes; something like hope. It disappeared just as quickly. He thought briefly.

"I am going to try something out on you," he said. "I want to see if I can give you deja vu."

He leaned closer to me and ran his fingers through my hair, pushing it out of my face. He put his lips against my ear gently and said something in a language I didn't understand. Immediately, my heart contracted and I gasped. I felt profoundly that I had experienced that moment before.

"What did you say?" I asked. "How did you know to say that?"

"Something in my native language. I've said it to you before," he told me. "Well, I do happen to be a rather intelligent man," he said.

"You won't tell me what it meant?" I asked. He leaned back and shook his head. "Okay, tell me who taught you Ancient Hylian, then."

"You di—" he began to respond, but he cut himself off in the middle of the sentence. "You do not need to know," he said, recomposing himself. He stood. "Would you like tea?" He asked. He pulled out an elegantly carved box of tea from a glass cabinet, unlatching it.

"Have you got earl grey?" I paused. "And sugar," I added.

"I do, I'll put the kettle on."

"Do you return here often?" I asked. It was a cramped and organized chaos, but it seemed well kept. It wasn't a place I could easily visualize Ghirahim in, but if he wasn't so flamboyant and maybe wore glasses, it would be the only place I could see him in. There was an open book on the kitchen table, and signs of life.

"Every once in awhile, there's a book I want to read."

"I didn't take you for a historian," I said, stretching out.

"I like having things. Precious things. These are all historical artifacts," he responded, gesturing to the books and wooden carvings laying around.

"Why are you so materialistic?" I asked, hoping it didn't seem rude.

"It fills a hole," he said blankly. That was likely the saddest thing I'd ever heard him say, and I felt a pain in my chest as I watched him turn to the whistling tea pot.

"If you go on like that, it won't ever be filled," I said, not necessarily to him, but to the universe. He let out a short, acerbic laugh as he rummaged about for mugs.

He soon after brought our tea and sat opposite to me. In a comfortable silence, I waited for it to cool and hummed a Hylian folk song.

"No matter the circumstance, you always seem carefree," Ghirahim commented after a sip out of his bright red mug. "I must admit that I am envious."

"But you always seem carefree, just in a different way. You seem like you don't give a fuck." He changed the subject.

"You should charge your phone while we are here. There's a charger in that backpack." I unzipped the front pocket, and along with two switchblades and a butterfly knife, a charger fell out. I looked to Ghirahim and he shrugged, then nodded towards an outlet in the wall. I plugged it in and took my first sip of tea.

"I never truly figured out how I feel about you," I inserted into the quiet.

He gave a grin.

"Is that so? What's stopping you?"

"The very basis of your existence is everything I devote mine to incarcerating. I should despise you," I started. "But—but there's something that draws me to you. I feel like it is so far out of my control that I have to sit back and watch this... this electromagnetic field draw me back to you every time I back away."

Ghirahim leaned forward, a gleam in his eyes. "Do tell me more."

"Everything you say confuses me. You switch from hating me and trying to kill me to kissing me and holding me from day to day. You have so many mysteries within you—maybe it's the detective in me that draws me to you. I don't know what it is. It's just, I feel like somehow, I have always known you. You are something entirely different but I am so familiar with what you are that I think it's impossible we haven't known each other in another life. Goddess, I'm rambling now. I sound so stupid. I don't know what I'm saying," I said, and resigned from trying to explain myself.

"The right thing," he breathed, and our lips collided.

I was in his lap, his hands traversing my body. I'd wrapped my arms around his shoulders, tucking his hair behind his ear and running my fingers through it. He slid his hand under my shirt and up my back with a tenderness he had never shown before, and this fact aroused me beyond belief. His body was a sultry bloom of incandescence, and color showed on his skin.

"You're trembling," he whispered against my lips.

"I'm terrified of the fact that I like this so much," I said, touching my forehead to his. Our eyes met and locked as he lifted me and rushed through the apartment, opening a door and setting me on a bed. He flicked on a dim light that was inside of a pink rock, giving the room a rosy glow.

We stared at each other, suspended in the passionate embrace of eye contact. I reached my hand out to him and he intertwined his fingers with mine, crawling above me.

"I have never desired something as much as I desire you in this moment, cloud boy," he whispered as he lowered his lips to my neck and began to bite and suck lightly.

I shuddered and grasped his hand harder. He trailed his tongue up my neck and kissed me, nibbling on my lip and pulling my shirt up. I reached to his sweater and removed it slowly, exposing his lean, lightly muscular torso and toned arms. He ripped my sweatpants from my legs and told me in a hoarse voice that he was getting impatient.

He licked his fingers and slide them inside of me easily. I let out a low moan and dug my fingers into his shoulders.

"It's here, isn't it?" He asked, moving his fingers around in a wide circle and stopping at a point deep inside. I shook and shouted his name; he'd found the spot that gave me the most pleasure quickly.

"Right there," I could barely say. "Fuck, there, Ghirahim," I moaned.

"My name on your lips in such a manner," he purred. "Poetry."

He poked and prodded at the spot, increasing his pace. I panted and flinched at the bolts of pleasure that every advance spread through my body.

"I want you to ride me," he said into my ear, pulling his fingers out and sitting me up straight.

"H-how?" I asked. He pulled a lubricated condom over his penis and gallantly took my waist, telling me to face and straddle him. He positioned his tip at my entrance and pushed me down onto him slowly.

I bit my lip and we locked eyes again. He found that spot, that accursed spot inside of me once again, and I moaned unabashedly.

"Grind your hips," he said into my lips, removing his hands from my waist and leaning back. I gyrated weakly, not knowing what to do.

He let out a light chuckle. "Like that, but harder." He slammed into me, all the way to his base, and sent shocks through me. He took a hold of my waist again, and lifted me up and down him, twisting my hips.

"Do it like this," he said, moving in such a way that absolute exhilaration pulsed through my body.

I placed my hands on his shoulders and used the leverage to push myself up and, being the overambitious fool that I am, slammed back down to his base—effectively stunning and paralyzing myself with pure pleasure—and threw back my head in ecstasy.

"You've really got to learn to do things for yourself," Ghirahim teased into my collarbone, once again gripping my hips and controlling my movements, pushing me up, thrusting me down.

I moaned and I shouted and I shuddered, all as I dug my nails into his back; the otherworldly arousal I was experiencing made me feel as if I was existing in some fantastical place between fantasy reality.

Ghirahim also looked like he was enjoying himself then more than any other time, biting his lip as he looked me over and scrunching his eyebrows together, shivering and closing his eyes when I moaned.

His voice was husky and his eyes were on fire as he said, "I'm close."

As he said that, I became so aroused that I leaned into his neck and bit down to keep in the humiliating noises that were sure to leave my mouth. Still, I let out a muffled moan and felt the vibration of my voice reverberate into his skin.

"Fuck!" Ghirahim moaned, digging the balls of his fingers into my hips and slamming me down hard. He leaned into me, panting, and I knew he came. I slid off of him and he pulled the messy condom off of him.

I laid on my back, stretching out. "You came first," I teased. I snuggled into a pillow.

"Oh, worry not, Skychild," he said, running his fingers down my body and edging closer to me. "That will never happen again." His knowing smirk was the end of me. "We are nowhere near done."

Needless to say, I came the next three times. He entered me from behind and pulled on my hair, pushed me on my back and choked me, and then made me really ride him.

I was incredibly out of breath, incredibly speechless, and incredibly exhausted.

"I didn't think you had it in you to go that hard," Ghirahim asserted, leaning against the pillows and watching me frown in the mirror at the immense number of hickeys, bruises, and scratch marks on my body.

"I didn't have it in me," I said, "I'm pretty sure I'm dead right now."

"Well, I did take you to paradise," he bragged, flipping his hair smugly.

"I didn't know demons had access to such a place," I joked, and he went still. I turned around and looked at Ghirahim, who was simply staring at me. I looked back at him.

After a moment, he blinked and said "Now I'm the one getting deja vu."

"Curiouser and curiouser," I mumbled, preoccupied with a painting on the wall that I hadn't seen before. "Did you paint that?" I asked. It showed an open landscape as seen through a fish eye, green trees curving above and grass swaying below. The sky was a purplish grey, and pink and orange clouds dotted the sky. It seemed as though something was missing from the center of the painting; a subject.

"At some point," he quipped curtly. He seemed to be in a bad mood, leaving the room and stomping around the house. In a minute or two after, I heard water running and figured he was taking a shower.

While he was gone, I pulled my boxers on and a black shirt that I found in his closet. It said "Vos autem testes estim Horum..." in purple letters. I looked over the painting again, and my ears began to ring.

Touch it, Fi's voice said in my head, so I approached it and reached out a finger slowly, tentatively, to the empty spot in the middle of the canvas. The closer I got to touching it, the louder a Hylian hymn played in my ears:

Here our hero rides the wind,

His strength and valor cleanse our sins,

He flew from heaven, conquered hell,

Lo! He served the goddess well.

My finger was less than a centimeter away from the painting. I felt a spark prick my finger and jump onto my skin, and then a tangible flash of electricity pushed me backwards. I watched in awe as slowly, the outlines of a young man with a sword became visible. Color filled the contour, flooding him with green. The sword in his hand looked eerily similar to the one Fi had given to me.

I gaped at it. It was me, right there in the painting, thrusting my sword into the sky.

"What—" Ghirahim began, coming into the room with a towel wrapped around his waist. He looked from me to the painting and gaped as well.

"What is this—" I said.

"How did you—" he said at the same time.

"I touched it and then there was a shock and it just appeared, I don't know..." I trailed off as I saw the back of my left hand. On the back of it, a triforce now glowed. "What...?" I was so discombobulated that I tried to speak, but nonsense just came out of my mouth. In frustration, I raked my hands through my hair and sat on the bed.

He looked at the back of my hand with eyes that had warfare behind them.

"We've got to leave," he said in a voice impossible to read. "Your sword. It's in your house?"

I nodded and looked up at him.

"Get dressed, we are leaving in five minutes." I watched him work his jaw and stood, pulling on the rest of my clothing without protest. Something inside of me told me that going with him gave me the highest probability of survival. The voice in my head sounded exactly like Fi.

After we'd gathered our gear and laced up our boots, Ghirahim left the apartment briefly and I snatched a book from his shelf quickly, shoving it in the backpack I'd taken from under the sink of his apartment.

The thought of his apartment brought a flood of fragmented thoughts and memories.

One recurring thought was Pipit. Pipit. PIPIT—

"What are you doing? Let's go," Ghirahim said from the doorway. I followed him outside where a small white economy car was running.

"Doesn't seem like your style," I said, looking at him in the corner of my eye as I got in the passenger seat.

"Exactly." Without another word, we sped out of the alleyway and into the empty street.

We drove in silence until I felt I was about to burst.

"Pipit." I half-hissed, half-groaned.

"Yes, Pipit. Three." Ghirahim's voice was flat and uninterested.

"How long was he working for you?" I asked, eyes stinging.

"His first year at SkyCorp. He was looking for extra money to pay off his mother's debt."

"How did you meet?"

"Mutual acquaintances," he said. His knuckles were turning white as he gripped the steering wheel.

"What is his job description?"

"'Assistant to Two.'" I let out a cold, short laugh.

"I don't know how I keep forgiving you but I can't even fathom forgiving him. He's your assistant. I should hate you even more."

"He betrayed you. It's impossible for me to betray you because we are never on the same side."

"Ah, yes, a fantastic reminder that you're a terrorist and I—"

"Link, we cannot have this argument now. Please go get your sword and whatever you'll need for a week."

"A week?" I repeated incredulously.

"Go," he growled, and I dashed into my apartment building.

I unlocked the door and ran to the closet, swinging my sword onto my back. I rushed about frantically, shoving clothes into a duffel bag and wondering whether I should call Fi.

I heard a shout from outside, and looked down to the street where Ghirahim was parked. Someone was leaning into the passenger window. Ghirahim got out of the car and poked a gun into the man's face. Pipit.

I sprinted down the stairs and burst through the door, yelling for Ghirahim to stop.

He didn't, and continued as if I hadn't spoke.

"You traitorous little shit," he spat. "Have you any sense of loyalty?"

"You're one to talk," Pipit responded cruelly. "We all know what you're doing with your little toy." He paused, shifting his weight and pushing the gun away from his face. "Haven't you crossed plenty of traitorous boundaries just to keep him on your side?"

Ghirahim removed the safety from the gun.

"Stop," I commanded with strength, walking up to him and taking the pistol from his hands, promptly whipping Pipit across the face, removing the bullets, and giving it back to Ghirahim.

"I have absolutely nothing to say to you, Pipit," I said calmly. "But I'd really like to know, does Karane know that you work for the people that killed her brother?"

His eyes slid from my face to my left hand. He grinned.

"As a matter of fact, she doesn't know. What's that on your hand, Link?"

"A tattoo," I said icily.

"Interesting," he laughed. "Very interesting." He looked to Ghirahim, who had moved to the side. "I'm sure you've got a long trip ahead of you, Boss. We won't follow you, you'll be back." He turned back to me. "And Link, don't worry, I won't tell a soul that you've betrayed SkyCorp by leaving the city with its most wanted criminal."

He turned and walked away with sureness; he knew we wouldn't attack him.

"Get in the car," Ghirahim signed. I obeyed.

We'd driven in absolute silence for an hour.

"He was your best friend," Ghirahim stated, stirring the quiet.

"Yeah," I mumbled.

"He never wanted to hurt you. He told me that he wanted you to be protected. He didn't want you to know about him."

"Right," I said.

"But he said he cared for his mother more than anything else, and he needed money to take care of her. They're thousands of rupees in debt. That's why he started working for me, and that's why he double crossed me and started working for them."

"Money," I tested the word on my lips.

"What about it?"

"You asked him where his loyalties lie, but you knew the answer."

"I was stalling, I did not want to kill him in front of you."

"How considerate of you." I looked out of the window and spoke no longer. We drove in quiet for another hour.

I had no idea where we were, we had passed every known landmark of the city and were now driving through an old unlit tunnel. The headlights of the car shone on moss and mushrooms, and the road itself had been overgrown with grass. I felt something swelling in my chest; it rose as my ears rang.

"This—this is—" I gasped, clutching my head and my heart. The tunnel let out, and the purplish grey sky and its pinkish orange clouds encircled the lavish carpet of vividly green grass.

"The painting?" I asked, overwhelmed with confusion.

"It's much more than that," Ghirahim said, looking forward.

"I... I've been here before," I gasped with realization.

A/N: So much seeeeeex. And FULLY CONSENSUAL, AT THAT! We are really moving up in the world, guys.

p.s. Pipit is a little bitch.