Fandom: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Characters/Pairing: Malon, Sheik (Zelda).
Rating: 13+
Disclaimer: All fun, no profit.
Author's Notes: Sheik here is Zelda, in a male form.
Summary: The fact that not every man could be a knight was something Malon was something she had learned young. Six years after Ganondorf took power, Malon has given up on heroes.
The fact that not every man could be a knight was something Malon had learned young. She had watched her mother push and shove her father into working as if he were a stubborn jackass, listening carefully to each tsk and sigh.
The day after her mother's funeral, she bunched her yellow shawl around her neck and stepped firmly into shoes too big for her. For months, she heckled her father out of his depression and scolded the farm boys into action. It was obvious who the breeches of the family had been passed down to.
The old ladies in the market always told her how grown up she was when she and her father rolled into town to make deliveries. That praise quickly became a shield against the griping of the hired-hands who called her names when she chased them from their naps in the hay. Not a one of them had a potential to take care of himself, and certainly no ability to take care of her. She answered all her father's teasing with a hard expression. Even as a child, Malon knew she would not marry any layabout.
When her father hired Ingo, she was initially thrilled. He was certainly not a pleasant to look upon, but he worked harder than all the other men put together. In those first few months he was a ray of sunshine in her life. His assigned stables would get clean, his cows milked. She never had to ask him to do a task twice.
She watched with mounting discomfort as his pleasant demeanor slowly disappeared. She found him getting rough with the livestock, watched the stables get filthier, and discovered him drinking late in the afternoons.
At night, Malon retreated to her stories and songs, full of men who toiled through hardships much greater than those at a ranch of cows and horses, all for a woman who had never asked a thing of them.
It was easy to see why she counted the fairy-boy as her first love. He was quiet and kind, unlike most of the men she knew. He had played games with her father without a hint of disdain for him, and yet showed amazing determination when given a task. Her heart fluttered for a long time after when she thought of how he had sat in the field for hours, coaxing the skittish Epona to him with her mother's song.
For the first time, when her father teased her about marriage, she smiled.
It was the last time she remembered smiling much. The fairy-boy disappeared, and Malon's world fell apart.
She had stopped thinking about love by the time she was in her teens. Men were the problem with this world. One had been consumed by his greed, and most of his gender had followed his example. Those that did not were too cowardly to fight. She told herself this over and over again, because if she thought about how those who had been brave, she would spend the night weeping over their lost lives.
Her life became a careful balancing act. She learned how to read Ingo's moods and know what step she could take. She learned to spot cruelty in the eyes of the men he had hired, and knew exactly where to stab a pitchfork if one tried to get too handsy with her. At night she dreamed about mounting Epona and running away, but she could see all too well what would happen to the rest of the animals without her. Ingo would tear the ranch apart.
So she stayed and kept her hatred quiet. Below it, locked deep in her heart, grew the desire that someone might save her. But the world was devoid of heroes.
It was not until she was sixteen that a hint of hope came to her. It slipped between the planks of an overhead loft in the form of a blood drop, splashing deep in the cream white of her milk bucket. A rustle came from above, as quiet as the movements of a mouse.
Malon had climbed the ladder with the axe in one hand.
Using the piles of tack and equipment as support, a strange, thin man was attempting to bandage his own torso. She watched, eyes just above the loft floor, as he stubbornly tucked the bandages in place with shaking fingers, even as he panted from the exertion.
She put a foot on the next rung. It creaked.
The stranger startled into action, a knife appearing from his sleeve. Malon raised her axe in answer, trying not to shiver as she saw his eyes. Red. Who had red eyes, save for monsters?
The movement had been too much for the stranger. He rocked forward, forced to catch himself on his hands in order to not collapse. Red began to seep through the bandages. He was much less threatening when his eyes were closed in a grimace of pain.
"Don't move!" she hissed at him, hoping no one outside would hear her. She put the axe on the loft floor and scrambled up. Stowaway or not, she was not going to let some man bleed to death in her barn. He could not stop her as she forced him onto his back. He still gripped the knife, making her scowl.
"I'm not going to hurt you, so you drop that right now." The man hesitated, and then the knife disappeared back into his sleeve. Well. It was better than pointing it at her.
Niceties fell by the wayside as she quickly set about assessing the situation. She scolded him any time he tried to move, and eventually he gave up on rationalizing with her, lying flat and allowing her to poke where she would.
She corrected his bandage, padding it with clean rags, and made him to take a swallow or two of milk before even asking his name.
"Sheik." A funny name for a funny man. "You're Malon, aren't you?"
"How did you know that?" Shiek blinked slowly. He had very pretty eyes, really, for their odd color. But men did not like it when they were called pretty, so she kept it to herself.
"We met, once. A long time ago." Malon doubted that; she would have remembered someone like Sheik. She decided to forgive him, however; he had lost a fair amount of blood, so one could not exactly expect him to talk sane.
"It's nice to meet you again, then," she told him. "What were you up to, to get a nice little cut like that?" He pressed his lips together, looking away. "What, is it a secret?"
"Yes." At least the boy was honest. She looked him over again and sighed.
"All right. I don't know what you're doing or what you've done, but I'll tell you what: you don't cause me any trouble, and don't make a sound, and I won't tell anyone you're up here." She had never seen someone look quite so grateful.
"I won't be a bother." Malon had no idea why, but she trusted his word.
"Good. Now stay here. I have to get back to work." She clambered back down and decided to put her bucket could go in Ingo's private stock. A little blood wouldn't hurt him none, and if it did, she was pretty sure she did not care.
The next day brought news of an attacked caravan that had been bringing supplies to Castletown. A sallow-looking man with black eyes, Ganondorf's badge shining on his shoulder, had spent the morning harassing Ingo for news of any strangers passing through. Malon sat by and kept mum.
That evening, Sheik was already up and moving around. Malon had no idea how someone healed so fast, but decided it would be best not to question it. She brought him dinner, which he wolfed down like a starving man.
"How long has it been since you ate?" she asked, eyeing his skinny body pointedly. Sheik shrugged. Malon supposed she should not be surprised. She had heard of plenty of hungry people around Hyrule. Occasionally they came to the ranch to beg for food; others came to try and steal it. Maybe that was why he attacked the caravan (it had to have been him; there was no other explanation).
"I'll leave tonight," Sheik announced suddenly, setting aside his bowl.
"Already? Are you sure you're up to it?" Malon was extremely reluctant to let him go. At first she rationalized that he was still hurt, and that she did not want him to harm himself more trying to move too quickly. She soon realized, however, that it was not that at all. It was that he was the first kind, brave man she had met in a long time. She wanted him to stay with her a while longer, give her just a little more hope to hang onto.
"I'm sure." Sheik was silent for a moment, before sliding his gaze over to her. "You could come with me." Malon jumped. Her throat constricted, preventing her from getting any words out. "I've seen the men here," Sheik said. "And how they treat you. I could take you to Kakariko, where your father is. You'd be safe there, from both Ingo and from Ganondorf. At least, as safe as anywhere is."
Had she not dreamed of this? A man coming to sweep her off her feet, take her away from the horror that was her life? Here he was, perhaps not as tall and blue-eyed as she imagined, and his entrance was not nearly how she had scripted it in her mind, yet he was closer than anyone who had passed her by before. Someone who was telling her it was okay to run away, who might take her hand and walk beside her.
"I can't." She had to wrench the words from her mouth. This was not fair. This should be her chance, her time to play the princess, the lovelorn heroine. "The animals, they need me. This place…" She looked around the barn she had grown up working in, remembered her mother's footsteps in the dirt, the low of the first cow she had ever milked, the laugh of her father as he leaned against a stable. "There is no one to protect it, anymore. No one but me."
The way he looked at her made her heart ache. She watched the way he nodded, memorizing his every graceful move so that she could replay this moment in her head again and again. "I understand," he said, his voice softer than any man's she had ever known.
"Don't leave tonight." Malon's hand found her way to Sheik's. "Leave in the morning. I have to make a milk run. I can hide you in the back of the cart. It's going to one of Ganondorf's camps, but I can let you out in the trees. It'll be a lot safer than you trying to get out of here and across the field at night." She was talking fast, but her thoughts spinning any faster. "And it'll be easier on you. Plus you can have breakfast in the morning. Stay one more night." Sheik was looking at their hands.
When he nodded his head, she let out the breath she had been holding. Sheik's skin was warm underneath her touch. She still could not shake the might-have-beens. Maybe she could still steal, if only tonight, a little bit of fairy tale.
"Would you like to sleep in a bed tonight?" she asked, dropping her voice low. Sheik just looked at her as if trying to read her thoughts. She stood up, still holding on to his hand. "Come sleep with me. It would be easier to get out in the morning, anyway." He said nothing, but allowed her to pull him to his feet.
As they snuck to the house, Malon tried to still the butterflies in her stomach. The heroines had never done this, exactly, but it had always been implied. Why shouldn't she? She had no reputation to care about. Better now, with her gentle stranger, than waiting for the day one of the stable-hands caught her off guard. There were no guarantees she would ever find a hero better than this one.
Sheik remained silent as Malon locked her bedroom door and secured it with a chair. Her shawl went off and got hidden in a chest as if her mother might be able to see what she was about to do. She slid out of her boots and had done away with her overdress before she got the nerve to look at Sheik again. His cowl and hat of bandages had been set aside, and folded neatly beside them was his shirt. Without the extra fabric he seemed even thinner, and the bandage still around him made him look frail.
That did not matter. He was enough. She dredged up every ounce of courage she possessed, taking a deep breath before stepping forward and pressing herself against his chest. He seemed surprised by the gesture. Had she made a mistake? Was this not how it was done?
Then his arms came around her, holding her warm and safe. Her skin tingled from the contact. How long had it been since someone had touched her like this, held her in their arms so kindly? It had been so many years, and she had been so, so lonely -
Her cheeks were wet before she realized she had begun to sob against Sheik's chest. His hold had tightened, fingers curling in her hair. She cried harder as she realized she was ruining everything. There was no fairytale in this for her.
Then Sheik leaned his head against hers. Her hiccups subsided as she wondered how long it had been since he, too, had had someone hold him. Perhaps this was what the goddesses had sent him for, not to be her hero, but so that they could fill each other's loneliness.
They slept in her bed that night, limbs tangled with one another's, soaking up the sweet embraces that they both knew would end all too quickly. Too soon the sun threatened the horizon, and Malon was forced to drag herself from between the warm blankets. She greeted Sheik with a good morning kiss; he deserved at least a smooch, even if they did nothing else. The look on his face was so alarmed Malon began to laugh and ended up giggling herself all the way through hitching up the cart.
The morning seemed brighter than any of the others in memory as she drove out of the ranch, Sheik tucked nicely behind her bench. For several hours they talked freely: she told him hopes and dreams, and he responded with a great many stories. At one point he even played for her as she sang, having managed to pull a harp from some mystical location.
Around ten o'clock Sheik leaned out of the back of the wagon and placed the chastest of kisses on her cheek. When she laughed, asking what it was for, there was no answer. He had gone.
She felt a deep pang of loss. With it, however, came a new feeling, one of hope. Men like Sheik existed in the world. Maybe elsewhere, hidden from Ganondorf's roving eyes, other men of such merit still lived. Maybe even fairy-boy was out there somewhere, challenging evil with his shining sword.
There were heroes in the world, and someday she would find hers.