Owned

Chapter Eleven: Hatred

A/N: Happy Monday! Here's your chapter.

Lana's trap was gone a moment too late, but Link ran over anyway, nearly tripping in his desperate haste, pain wrenching throughout his body. He fell to his knees beside his master, clutching at his wrist and trying to fight through the pain that he, too, experienced.

"G-Ghirahim?" Lids fluttered, but there was nothing in reply. Link searched valiantly for a potion in his pocket, but he knew that he had used them all long before they had left Hyrule. Tears pooled in his eyes, spilling hastily downwards. His lip trembled, and still he turned to the one person that he thought would understand, hatred burning at his very core. His words came low and ominously soft, even though they rippled with emotion.

"What have you done?"

"She's freed you, Link," Impa said impatiently from behind him. He felt Lana's hand on his shoulder, but he slapped it away, his hands trembling.

"Get out." They didn't respond immediately, and so he repeated in a hoarse shout, "Get out!"

Zelda shuffled out the door, and Impa and Lana were soon to follow. Link propped up the limp form of his dying lover, his vision blurred.

"G-Ghirahim, please..."

He heard a single, weak "hush," and his voice silenced, although he still made soft, sobbing noises.

Ghirahim's eyes fluttered open, and his hand closed around Link's. "You'll be free. Free to - to do what you really want."

Link wanted to say that what he needed was to be with Ghirahim, but he couldn't, so he just continued to search his master's pained gaze.

"H-here." Ghirahim forced his free hand up to his single earring. He took it out, and he handed it to Link. "Something...to remember me by."

He was sure that Link would have killed to say what was on his mind in these last few moments. He knew, and so he decided to allow it.

"What is it?"

"I couldn't forget you." With a strike at a joke, Link added, "I have a scar across my back to remind me every time I see a mirror."

"Now you have an earring." Even as lighthearted as it seemed, Ghirahim felt moisture gather in his eyes, wetting his cheeks. At first he wasn't sure what it was, until he recalled the term. He was crying. "I'm sorry. I...I could have used my final form. I could have stopped this from happening. But...I didn't want you to know. I didn't want you to see what it symbolized. Because...I..." He tensed when a flood of throbbing pain ran through him via the light arrow, and wished that the other man didn't have to experience it, too. "I...l-...I lo-" He tightly squeezed Link's hand, shutting his eyes, his breath quick and erratic. "I love - I love you. Link."

The blonde squeezed back, and Ghirahim felt a gentle kiss land upon his lips.

"I love you too."

Ghirahim held on to the kiss. It was light and gentle, but it clearly indicated their goodbye.

Without warning Link, the sword spirit spent his last breath in that kiss, making it as memorable as possible before everything suddenly faded out. He knew what it was. He had died before.

Link felt it. He felt the fiercest of pains ripple through his entire body - not the kind of pain to make you scream, but the kind to make you cry like a baby. The kind of pain that left you empty and hollow and lonely and made you want to stab yourself until it stopped. The kind that hurt deep to the very core.

He made wailing noises that he wasn't at all proud of, trying to muffle them by burying his face into the fabric of Ghirahim's cloak, but it only made him feel worse. His back was trying to burn itself off, his eyes were trying to shed every drop of moisture from his body, and there was no one there to help him. He had never felt so dependent in his life.

The one woman he had trusted with everything he was, everything he had ever been - the woman whose destiny had been intertwined with his ever since the birth of Hyrule - had destroyed all that he relied upon.

Link managed to quiet his sobs until they finally ceased. He rose to his feet. He tucked the earring safely into a tiny pocket before taking steps, one by one, to the door that Princess Zelda had walked out.

When it opened, he pulled the Master Sword's scabbard from his belt and held it out for her, clenching his other hand in a fist to keep from resorting to violence - as they had.

"Link?" she questioned. She didn't take it, but tried to hold his gaze, undaunted by the sheer hatred that burned in it. "What are you doing?"

He forced it into her grasp, his shoulders quaking. "Go back to Hyrule," he hissed. "I don't ever want to see you again - not as long as I live."

"I don't understand. Are you not freed?"

Impa roughly took hold of his shoulder when his temper snapped, and held him long enough for him to retain his sanity.

He held the Sheikah's wrist to vent silently, his grip tightening until he couldn't feel his hand. "I hate you," he snarled to the princess. "I didn't need freed. Maybe at first, but he changed, Zelda. He was better than you thought he was. And you killed him." He bit his lip to keep from sobbing again. "I'll never fight for a ruler who can't give someone a second chance." Before he thought about it, he spat the most venomous comparison he knew of: "Even Ganondorf gave him a second chance, Zelda." Ignoring the gasps, he pushed Impa away violently enough to slam her into a wall and turned back around, opening the door back up with trembling hands.

"Link, where are you going?" Lana asked. "You belong in Hyrule."

"I belong wherever my heart does," the broken Hero replied. "And it will always be with the man who now lies dead in that room, not with Hyrule - never mind its thoughtless princess." He paused, and without turning, tossed them the Hylian shield he carried. His blue scarf was wrapped around it.

Zelda took a shaky step forward. "Link? What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean." He turned to look at her one last time, this time allowing the deepest of sorrows to cover up his hatred. His lower lip trembled violently, and he bit back another sob. "I loved him, Zelda. I still love him. I'll always love him." His expression firmed into a temporary mask, barely held in place. "He didn't belong in Hyrule, and the moment he made that decision, you lost me, too."

"What are you going to do with the tunic?" Impa asked coldly.

He let out a sole huff of bitter laughter. "I'm going to burn it."

Lana gasped. "You can't do that!"

"Why not?"

No one could come up with an answer, and so he shut the door, returning to Ghirahim's side. He snapped off the end of the arrow and removed it, then brushed white locks into order.

The torches had burned out, and now only moonlight guided his sluggish, grieving actions.