Title: Where the Edges Overlap
Rating: SFW
Wordcount: 5091
Pairing: Impa/Nabooru
Summary: While the Hero of Time sleeps, Impa and Nabooru bring up Sheik together-in one version of history, at least.

Note: Written for wingus for the 2014 round of FemslashEX.

"Travel after sunset and keep to the shadows. Remember the lies we are telling, as well as the lies they cover; layer deceptions like cloaks. Bravery is not foolishness. When your flask is half empty, turn back. See with your eyes, listen with your ears, smell with your nose, and tell me everything when you return."

So Impa said, and Zelda listened solemnly, eyes wide and lips pressed together. She was too young yet, but they lacked the luxury of time. Traveling together carried the risk that someone would connect the boy at Impa's side to the girl who had been Impa's charge. While they could not remain in the desert indefinitely, nor could they leave until Zelda was prepared to survive on her own at a moment's notice.

Already they had remained in the desert longer than Impa had first intended, but the harsh conditions were efficient teachers, and Ganondorf was too arrogant to look beneath his own nose. Zelda's mission tonight had dual purposes, even if she did not realize them: to determine whether their presence had aroused suspicion, and to prove whether she could make such a judgment on her own.

When she was gone, and the night crept past in the skittering of insects, Impa settled cross-legged on the floor of the small cavern where they had been sheltering. Shadows were shadows all the world over; deep within one, she knew them all. Ganondorf's gaze still burned toward Kakariko, where the spirit sealed at the bottom of the well grew ever more resentfully restless. That alone should have been enough to distract her, but she found herself pacing to and from the entrance, tracking the moon's too-slow progress through the sky.

Zelda drank to calm her nerves as often as to quench her thirst. Surely she had turned back by now.

The first paleness of dawn tinged the horizon before Impa spied movement in the sand. She waited at the cavern's entrance, melting into the shadows, and tracked every telltale flicker with narrowing eyes. When Zelda reached the threshold, she said, "You were followed."

Zelda sucked in a sharp breath and spun around, nearly fumbling her knife as she drew it. Much too young, yet.

A Gerudo—of course—leapt lightly over the dune behind which she had obscured herself and approached with her hands up and empty. Her calculating smile did not set Impa at ease. "That's a fine pair of eyes on you," she said, stopping short when Impa's gesture bade her. "Hey, easy, that was a compliment. I'm not here to fight."

"Then why are you here?"

"Why's a Gerudo in Gerudo Valley, you mean? C'mon, the interesting question here is, why's a Sheikah in Gerudo Valley?"

Impa kept her face smooth as stone. "We have not trespassed. Why have you followed my apprentice?"

"I've never seen a real, live Sheikah before. I hear they used to have one at Hyrule Castle, before, well, you know." The Gerudo shrugged, setting a hand on her hip at the end of the motion. Impa warily noted its distance from the knife at her belt. "So I'm not gonna turn down a chance to shadow one of the legendary shadow folk. Honestly, I'm surprised this little guy didn't notice me."

Zelda's chin jutted forward. "I thought I heard something."

"Yet you failed to act on your instincts," Impa said sternly. Zelda drew her arms tight to her sides and dropped her gaze to the sand.

"Hey, he's not bad," the Gerudo interjected. "I'm just better."

Impa narrowed her eyes. "You've made your point. What do you want?"

"For you not to act like I'm stupid, for starters." With her toe, the Gerudo drew the horned moon of Ganondorf in the sand. She locked eyes with Impa before spitting on it and grinding it out under her heel.

"I'm Nabooru," she added, holding out her hand, "and I'm pretty sure you're on my side."

Zelda stammers and trembles as she speaks of a massive suit of armor patrolling the sands. The desert is unsafe, as is all of Hyrule. Impa explains that the risk of passing again through Gerudo territory is greater than the risk of remaining here. No true refuge awaits them anywhere.

It is a harsh truth for one so young. When Zelda cannot sleep after hearing it, she whispers, "Will you please sing my lullaby?"

Shadows are scarce during the heat of the day. None nearby hide eavesdroppers, but Impa cannot say with certainty that there are no ears concealed by sun and sand. "It is the Royal Family's lullaby, not ours," Impa should say, but Zelda is curled up tight on the hard cavern floor, swallowing her sobs. She needs no reminder that home and family have been taken from her.

Impa curls up beside and around her to hum into her ear until she sleeps.

To be the shadows of the Hylians was to be necessarily out of step of their sense of honor, but there was an unsubtle difference between doing the Goddesses' work in the dark and simple thievery. When Impa caught Zelda's hand practicing the motions of a pickpocket, she issued a quick reprimand before taking Nabooru aside.

"What? I'm helping," was all Nabooru had to say in her defense.

Impa crossed her arms. "I am not training him to become a thief."

"I thought you were training him to survive on his own. You think he's never gonna get hungry?"

"I'd only steal from the cruel and wicked," Zelda said earnestly. Impa shooed her outside with orders to dodge twenty leevers.

Once she was out of sight, Impa said, "This is not a matter for discussion. The Sheikah are not thieves."

"Oh? I hear you've been plenty worse, when your kings and queens snap their fingers." Nabooru made a face clearly calculated to test Impa's commitment to not punching her in the mouth.

Impa tactically loomed. "Do not presume to lecture me on the history of the Sheikah. Right now, I am training my apprentice to survive and to resist Ganondorf from the shadows. Making a thief of him accomplishes neither."

Instead of backing down, Nabooru rose up on the balls of her feet and leaned forward. "Since when is stealing from Ganondorf's supporters not resisting him? I'm a thorn in his side, and he can't even see me to pluck me out."

"There are far better—"

"Hey, don't you lecture me, either. There's honor among thieves, you know! We have our own moral code, even if Ganondorf's screwing it all up now."

Nabooru was all insolent nerve, as if she had any right to be offended, as if Impa's provisional acceptance of her aid made her second-in-command of both the Gerudo and the Sheikah. She seemed neither to understand nor to care that any trust she enjoyed came from Impa's inability to imagine what she stood to gain by not having betrayed them immediately to Ganondorf.

"Whatever your ways," Impa replied, "they are not ours."

"What do you know about our ways? We don't steal from the poor and the weak. We only knock people down when they're a few pegs too high. That's ourhonor." Nabooru hesitated only a moment before adding tartly, "We don't kill."

While Impa had no doubt that her ancestors had been called upon to assassinate, she could not have begun to guess whose blood had last been spilled upon the sand, or when. The Sheikah passed down history abstracted into lessons and legends; details distracted at best, or at worst drew the outlines of schisms. The Gerudo, like the Hylians, wove the past from tangles of grudges.

There no point in arguing over the deeds of past generations. Impa pressed forward: "So you do not, but do all of your people agree?"

"They should," Nabooru snapped. "Look, I'm working on it. And like you're gonna stand there and tell me no Sheikah's ever stolen anything, ever."

"I said no such thing. I said that we are not thieves."

Nabooru opened her mouth with an incredulous noise, then sucked her breath back in, brow furrowed. "Okay, never mind," she said at length. "I think I get what this is really about. Your boy likes me because I'm fun, and you're... you. But I'm not trying to poach him. He's yours, and I'm just trying to look out for him, too."

The way Nabooru rolled certain words around her mouth—"he," "boy," the pseudonym Zelda had chosen for herself—coated them with suspicion. Perhaps they sounded wrong from Impa's lips, as well; it was sentimental folly to continue thinking of the child as the princess.

"Then do not undermine me," Impa replied stiffly. After a deep breath, she added, "I apologize if I have been ungrateful for your aid."

"No 'if' about it, but yeah, sorry for going behind your back. Force of habit, I guess." Nabooru gave her a slanted smile. "Partners?"

"In his best interests, yes."

Impa reminded herself to take Zelda—Sheik—aside later and emphasize the need to be ever mindful of the the skin-deep hum of illusion, in order to react in an instant if it ever fell silent. Binding and padding could disguise only so much.

From the cavern's entrance, Sheik's voice announced, "I dodged twenty-five, and I brought back the fronds of one of the purple ones."

Impa accepted them with a nod and a brief frown. "Overconfidence kills, child. But you've done well."

"Yeah," Nabooru added, "that's a test we give our own new warriors. Almost couldn't have done better myself at your age." Sheik beamed. "If it's okay with your boss, I'll teach you some more of my tricks. A pretty boy like you needs a few great escapes up his sleeve, because you're gonna grow up to be Gerudo bait. Or maybe you wouldn't mind getting caught, eh?"

Sheik's face bloomed red.

"Don't tease him," said Impa. She wound the fronds around her wrist to keep from accidentally crushing them in her hand.

"Heh, sorry." Nabooru reached down to clap him on the shoulder. "Anyway, learn fast, kid, and I've got a job waiting for you. I'm just one pair of shiny gauntlets away from really messing Ganondorf up good."

Impa counted to ten on a slow breath. "We need to speak again in private."

For good or ill, in the shallow shadow of the cavern, Zelda can let her mask slip. More often it is Impa's tongue that slips in the unguarded heart of the night.

"Sheik," she is corrected. Sentimental longing for what is lost threatens them both. It it too much to live two lives at once; she must not ask this of one so young who already suffers so much. It would be a kindness if Zelda truly could shed all that came before and live as if her first breath tasted of sand. Sheik has only ever been Sheik.

Neither of them mentions the lullaby again. They hear the creak of metal too often now for both of them to sleep at once.

One by one, trophies began to decorate the cavern. Impa should have disapproved; the cavern was no home at all, and would have to be abandoned at a moment's notice when it was inevitably discovered. But when the three of them passed the heat the of the day together like a patchwork family—Sheik plucking the strings of a lyre carved from sun-bleached bones, Nabooru braiding leever fronds, Impa in quiet communion with the shadows—she found that she had no desire to begrudge any of them what little comfort could be found in this blighted world.

Such days had grown rarer, as Nabooru was gone as often as not. Sheik became restless and fretful in her absence. Perhaps it had been foolish to allow her to entangle herself so thoroughly with them. They would not remain the desert forever, and someday Sheik would travel entirely on his own.

Still, when Nabooru returned in the dead of night after a long week's absence, weary about the eyes but grinning, Impa could not help but be glad of it.

"Check this out," she said, untying a sack on the cavern floor. Moonlight glinted from a curve of polished wood; when Sheik cupped cold fire in his hands for light, it picked out intricate carvings on the limb of a fine bow. "Sneaky poes have been breaking in and stealing some of Ganondorf's favorite trinkets, so I'm going poe-hunting. And wouldn't you know it, I think one of those clever jerks is gonna make off with my poe-hunting bow. How's that for irony, eh?"

Impa glanced at selection of gems glittering on the walls before returning her attention to the bow. At Nabooru's nod, she lifted it to test the balance and set it back down satisfied. "The craftsmanship is impressive."

"I'd sure hope so. I had to get seriously bossy to get the guards to hand it over." Nabooru pressed the bow into Sheik's hands with a wink. "Anyway, I told you I'd reward you for shooting all those guays."

It had been a while since she'd managed to stun him silent. Impa could see the outline of his lips parted under his mask. "This is—thank you," he managed.

"You're too cute for your own good, kiddo." She tweaked his nose, drawing a small indignant noise, before turning to Impa. "I got something for you, too. Close your eyes."

Wondering exactly when such a request had become reasonable, Impa complied. Her nape tensed as Nabooru's fingers brushed against it and tugged lightly at her hair. When the contact ceased, she listened to metallic rustling across the room before what felt like the handle of a mirror tapped her palm.

"Okay, you can look now," said Nabooru. "Tada!"

It took Impa a moment to angle the glass effectively, but she quickly identified Nabooru's work: her usual hair tie had been replaced by a tightly woven band of purple leever fronds. Small, dark gems studded it, held tightly enough in place not to rattle when Impa shook her head.

"Thank you," said Impa. It didn't feel like enough, so she added, "It's well made."

"Well, you know. Clever thief hands." Nabooru wiggled her fingers.

Still something was not enough, and from the way Nabooru maintained eye contact, Impa presumed the feeling was not hers alone. They watched each other in uncertain silence until Sheik said, hesitantly, "I've been writing a song for you."

Nabooru turned to him with her eyebrows arched. "Oh? Well, let's hear it."

"It's not finished." Looking as if he'd rather be shoving his foot into his mouth, Sheik hastily gathered up a handful of arrows. "You must be hungry. I'll catch dinner."

Nabooru's amused smile faded as soon as he did among the silvered dunes. Without meeting Impa's eyes, she said in a low voice, "They know something's up. He'll be okay out there now, but it took me half the night to shake everyone following me. I can't come back here again any time soon. And you... you should probably get out of here, too."

Impa lowered the hand that had risen unconsciously to touch her hair. "This was inevitable. It's a wonder we've gone so long undetected."

"Yeah." Nabooru still wouldn't meet her gaze, moving instead to begin detaching the decorations from the walls. "Don't tell me where you're going. I'll plant evidence, make out like I've just discovered Sheikah hiding out here. That should buy you some time." She paused, bauble in hand, to sigh. "Should I even still be here when the kid gets back? Should I just take off now?"

Better that they all left now; fate seldom resisted temptation. When Impa tried to give voice to the words, her throat tightened.

They discard deceptively as they travel—guay bones piled where they never slept, trails of cloth leading off a tangent from their true trajectory, ruined flasks thrown in offering to poes drifting in the opposite direction. When they reach the heart of the wasteland, they need no longer bother. The wind scatters the world around them.

Ganondorf knows now that there are Sheikah in his desert. His Gerudo are not fools enough to venture into the wasteland hunting them, preferring instead to secure the border. It is a more patient tactic than Impa thought could satisfy him, but so far no patrols have been diverted to search. Not even Sheikah can survive forever in the brutal jaws of the storm.

Despite their crimson mask, Sheik's eyes are still Zelda's, bright and determined in a face that has not yet grown into them. Impa must speak now to the Sheikah, not the princess; the princess will not leave this desert alive. It is still too soon, but it is also nearly too late.

"Listen carefully, Sheik," she says. "Keep to the shadows and become as one of them; an empty darkness is the only lie that will shield you now. Bravery is not foolishness. See with your eyes, listen with your ears, smell with your nose, and do not rest until you reach Kakariko. I will find you as soon as I can."

Sheik's voice but Zelda's eyes, wide with alarm: "You're not coming with me?"

"I will find you." She presses her finger to Sheik's mouth, as she used to when Zelda woke crying from nightmares. "You must not let fear master you. Be there for me to find."

The Gerudo will not venture blindly into the wasteland, but enough of them, she hopes, will give chase.

The desert was a lonely place, or it was not. Years later, Impa still had failed to smooth away this detail, and it opened up like a chasm inside her when the Gerudo sage appeared within the Temple of Light.

Her brain itched, deeper than she could scratch. When formal introductions were finished, she slipped away alone, to detach from time and meditate in one of the few soothing patches of darkness to be found in this place. In a distant shadow, Sheik gathered courage for what was to come.

"Hey," said Nabooru's voice. Then, emphatically, "Hey. How much do you remember?"

Impa opened her eyes and picked out Nabooru's outline in the gloom. She had come alone. After a moment's consideration, Impa replied, "Too much, and not enough."

"That would really piss me off if I didn't know exactly what you mean." Without asking permission, Nabooru sat beside her and continued, "That old man says Link's been messing up time right and left. That's why I've got being a brainwashed suit of armor all mixed up with being your wife."

Double vision blurred a swath of Impa's memories and made their recollection queasy. It took her a moment to focus enough to say with ironclad certainty, "You were not my wife."

Nabooru arched an eyebrow. "We raised a kid together. What do Hylians call that?"

"We were missing an essential element of marriage," Impa replied stiffly, "even by Gerudo standards."

"Were we?" Nabooru scooted nearer, until the fine hairs on Impa's arms rose as if to reach for her. Too late, Impa half-remembered that trying to cow her into retreating only drew her closer. "I mean, it's all fuzzy, but if we didn't get around to it, it wasn't for lack of interest. Could've cut that tension with a knife, right?"

What Impa recalled most clearly from one past was the glare of the light from eyes brimming with tears, the moment of dread and determination at childhood's end. From the other, the heat that rose from Nabooru's bare shoulder pressed close to her own, the tickle of fingertips at her nape.

"Did I kiss you good-bye?" Nabooru mused. Her shoulder was still warm despite the damp chill of the temple. "I should have."

"I can't recall. The competing memory is overwhelming."

"I bet I'd remember if I had. My competing memory is just more clanking around in a suit of armor, being awful." She frowned. "Is it okay to be mad at the Hero of Time? Actually, I don't care. I'm mad anyway."

Impa bit back a lecture about the good of the world outweighing the happiness of a few. "What happened to you?"

"Right around the time I would've followed your kid home, I ran into another kid just the right size to sneak in and steal those gauntlets for me. Talk about the wrong place at the wrong time, huh?" Nabooru laughed bitterly. "You should be mad, too. I terrorized you."

"Not of your own will."

Nabooru snorted. "What does that matter? I still did it."

It was a wonder, in retrospect, that there had ever been a version of history in which they understood each other at all.

For a while they were quiet, listening to the low drone that suffused the temple, until Nabooru asked, "So how's our kid doing?"

There were no eavesdroppers in the Sacred Realm, but the prospect of accusations and explanations wearied Impa. "His part is nearly complete."

"And then it's her part, right?" Nabooru grinned as if Impa had failed to control her expression. "C'mon, give me some credit. Also, I double-checked with the old man. 'There are no secrets in the Chamber of Sages,' apparently."

Impa scowled purposefully, to cover up whatever else her face might have been doing. "When did you realize?"

"Either an hour ago or years ago. I really wanna strangle Link for making time so hard." Nabooru lowered her voice to add, "I'm not mad or anything. You never told me, but I figured it out and never said anything, either. People like us, we keep secrets."

In the shadows of Hyrule, the very air tensed in anticipation of change. The fate of the world hung from delicate threads woven together years before and tangled across timelines; there were more important matters than those presently before Impa. But what she had helped set in motion now moved beyond her reach, and if Impa meant to allow herself to be caught up in details, she preferred those most immediate.

"That was a fine band you crafted for me," she said, turning her head just far enough to face Nabooru. "My hair escaped less often than in the history Link created."

Nabooru's hand glided up her back to encircle the tie gathering her hair. "I could make you another. It won't be the same, but what is?"

"I would appreciate that," Impa replied.

Slowly, careful not to catch any stray hairs, Nabooru slid the tie away and tousled Impa's hair loose. "Look at that," she said, "there's hardly even enough of it to pull back. What's the point?" Sliding her fingertip along Impa's ear, she added, "Does it get tangled on these?"

"I did not say that I would appreciate a critique."

"Fine, fine. How's this?" Nabooru gathered Impa's hair between her thumb and forefinger, studied the effect, and flattened the rest of her hand against Impa's head to coax her forward.

Nabooru's mouth was warm, and her lips tacky with layers of pigment. When she shifted angles, the large gems on her chest and forehead pressed coolly against Impa's skin.

When Nabooru drew back, letting her hand fall to cup Impa's nape, her cheeks were flushed. "Well?"

"Well," Impa agreed, which appeared to fluster her. "However, I still can't recall if this is how we parted ways."

"Who cares? I liked that better than a good-bye kiss, anyway."

Another six jars spun up in the air. Impa tucked and rolled to the right, counting as they shattered against the wall behind her. When silence followed the fifth, she leapt to the left and felt the final jar whistle past her ear.

As always, the traps were incrementally more clever than they had been on her last visit. In the next room, the mirrors had multiplied and hung from the walls and ceilings at bizarre new angles. Impa took in the configuration briefly before sliding into the one corner the light couldn't reach, where the shadows were thick enough to muddle the walls at a Sheikah's touch. Nabooru could have left such shortcuts in every room, surely, but she never responded to the suggestion with anything but, "What fun would that be?"

Nabooru herself waited in the room of the colossus, lounging in the palm of the statue's right hand, hair spilling between its fingers. "Took you long enough," she called down. "Too many moving spike walls this time?"

The shadows heeded Zelda almost as readily as they heeded Impa; they whispered her location no more precisely than near, but not here. "I was in no hurry."

"You can be really mean when you want to, you know that?"

"I meant that I didn't expect to find her waiting for me. She's out in the desert, I take it?"

"You have to ask?"

Since Nabooru still had made no move to climb down, or even to sit up, Impa scaled the colossus in a series of precise leaps. When she reached the pad of the thumb, just beside Nabooru's head, she reached down and added, "Have you been well?"

Nabooru took her hand and tugged it downward. Impa's reflexes kept her upright. "Downright cozy. What're you trying to get me up for?"

Last time, Nabooru had been eager to abandon the silent sanctuary of the temple. It was difficult to understand how her moods shifted. Without letting go of her hand or following its pull, Impa asked, "How is your political situation?"

"Oh, you know. Half of the Gerudo revere me as the great hero who saved our culture, half of them want to kill me for king-slaying, and I can't trust any of them, because we're all such good liars." Nabooru kept her tone light, but the skin around her eyes tightened. "I've been spending a lot of time holed up in here lately, if that's what you're asking. But it's not like I'm scared to go outside. I mean, c'mon."

It never helped to point out that time would smooth it all away, that history would remember only a hero and a villain, a cataclysm and a recovery. As Impa considered other options, Nabooru added, "Sit down already. I thought you weren't in a hurry."

The massive hand of the colossus had more than enough room for them both. Impa sat with her back against the upward curve of her thumb, facing Nabooru, who remained sprawled flat. A little shifting brought Nabooru's head onto her thigh, and she stroked the exposed skin of Nabooru's arm with easy familiarity. They always settled back into each other, as if by unspoken agreement to ignore whatever time had passed since they parted.

For a while they were quiet, until Nabooru asked, "Does she ever run away anywhere else?"

From time to time, the shadows brought word of her visits to other temples, but she traveled with the brisk cadence of business. It was only the desert that drew her to wrap herself in Sheikah grab and slip away from Kakariko in the dead of night. "No."

Nabooru draped an arm across Impa's lap. "Heh, that's because it's about more than going stir-crazy. Out here, she gets to see me, and she gets to be Sheik instead of Zelda for a while."

Impa frowned at her. "She's no longer in hiding. That distinction no longer matters."

"Sure it does. There's who she is and then there's who she's being, you know?"

Living two lives at once was wrenching and exhausting, and inexplicable for anyone to continue by choice. "No, I don't know."

"Well, lucky you. Some of us have to turn it on and off." Nabooru sighed. "I can't even tell you how sick I am of Gerudo politics."

They'd had the same argument half a dozen times, always ending in the same failure to settle whether cowardice was a matter of action or intent, so Impa only replied, "There is room for you, if you want it."

"Plenty of room here, too." Nabooru waved her free hand lazily overhead. "And mine hasn't got redeads in it."

Hyrule Castle Town contained more tents and skeletal buildings now than monsters, and the foundation of the new castle had begun to take shape, but such corrections would only distract from the larger issue. "I have a duty."

"And I don't?"

In peacetime, even the young queen could abscond for days on end and trust her advisers to continue the work of rebuilding. Hyrule would no sooner collapse without Impa's presence than the Gerudo would notice their most controversial authority figure had left the Spirit Temple to its own defenses. Impa changed tacks: "She comes here because of you."

"Eh, she spends as much time dodging leevers and shooting guays as she does talking to me." Nabooru shrugged against Impa's thigh. "You might as well claim she comes here because she wants us to canoodle. I say we stop speculating and do a little testing."

Impa wound a segment of Nabooru's hair around her finger. "What do you propose?"

Shaking her hair free, Nabooru sat up. "A contest, for starters. Instead of waiting for her to come back at dawn, let's see which of us can find her first."

Neither had any particular advantage; the shadows that informed Impa shielded Zelda, and the wind shifted the landscape beyond their blended memories. "What is the prize to be?"

"You find her, I'll go back with you for a week. I'm not getting near your creepy graveyard temple, but I'll bum around Kakariko, play Gerudo ambassador, make the Hylians nervous. See if the kids stays put." Nabooru held out her hand but retracted it, clucking her tongue, when Impa reached. "First you put something on the table."

Impa considered. "One week, here. You have no use for me as an ambassador, so I'll assist in one act of subterfuge against your enemies."

Nabooru brightened. "Now those politics I like." The satiny fabric of her glove slid against Impa's palm, then up along Impa's arm when they broke the handshake. When she reached Impa's nape, Impa leaned forward instinctively, lips softening.

It took her only a moment to realize that Nabooru had stolen her hair band and leapt away in one fluid motion, but a moment was all Nabooru needed to slide down the arm of the colossus. Impa gave chase, hair brushing distractingly against her neck. "I assume we're playing now," she called, without rancor.

Nabooru winked over her shoulder. "Aren't we always?"