Author's note: Just an odd one shot that popped into my head. Note that I still haven't finished Skyward Sword, I'm a little bit lazy.
Disclaimer: If I owned it, Sheik would be his own character, alive, and kicking righteous butt, so obviously I don't own it. Suing might net you a whole penny, if you're lucky.
Construct of Shadows
By BlackLadyCharon
He doesn't know himself. Too much is gone, too much is broken. He knows he was found in the rain and the muck, half gutted, burned, bruised and bleeding and beaten. He suspects two of his saviors know him, the golden light maiden and the sharp bright knight as he thinks of them. They flinch when they look at him for more then a second, and they never, ever turn their backs to him. Once the maiden began a whispered song of power when he startled her by moving too fast, and the knight nearly took his head off with a blade when he came up behind him and laid a hand on his shoulder.
So he knows they fear him, but he can't understand why. His wisdom is scattered like Nayru's precious tears, and courage is something he has little understanding of. Why throw yourself wholeheartedly into the fray when holding back may net you greater advantage? Yet he has power in spades, but no real will to use it. It matters not to him anymore, because he has no one to use it for. What use is all his power, all his strength, if there is no reason to wield it? No Master to serve, no will to bind his own to. Without that, he feels lost, adrift with nothing to cling to.
So he watches, and slowly the idea trickles into his head. Many people seem to have no need of a servant, and the large red head… no, he would not trust his power to that ham handed lunk. Oh, he will give the lunk credit, he is quite clever with his inventions, his Groo-Whatever it is and the new coal eating metal horse he calls a 'train' and the bows that fire fancy little bolts, but give him unrestrained power and the lunk looses what little mind he has. He's seen how the lunk leads others, blind and petty, and he's heard tales of how the lunk used to bully the sharp bright knight. In fact, the more he looks around him, the more he thinks that only the maiden and the knight really ought to be in charge of him. They know him, he can tell, and even if he was dangerous at one point, they trust him enough to let him heal at their hearths.
He has seen the patterns that the maiden's protector, the woman with eyes like his, bears upon her skin, and it is easy enough to trace something similar on his own. Not as elaborate, for he does not believe he is as high in the hierarchy as she. His clothing is a deliberate patchwork, bound together by wound wrappings and the ragged cloak now serving as a blank tabard, and when he finds the two lengths of white cloth he takes them, using them to hide his hair and face as best he can. He eyes the tabard, displeased by it, and then draws both the eye he associates with the maiden and the three triangles that belong to the knight upon it. It pleases him, and he drifts almost aimless through the small shelter the two have lived in and brought him into, following the motions of cooking and some cleaning that he has seen both do a thousand times. When they come home, his two Masters, they stare at him as if they think he's lost what little marbles he ever possessed. Maybe he has, or maybe he's just found a few again. The knight makes amusing noises, while the maiden queries at him.
"Ghirahim?"
Strange, it is the first time he's ever heard his name, but he shakes his head, dismissing it. That name is gone like all the other old fragments of himself, and he whimsically plucks his new name, his true name now, out of the ether.
"I am Sheik, Mistress, and my duty is to serve both of you until the world ends."
'Fin'