Memories
Disclaimer: Belong to Miyamoto and Nintendo. I don't claim any of the characters pertained to be my own.
Link muses on the past. I wrote this for a challenge, in under an hour, listening to a medley of depressing music. And it sure does show through in this. First proper angst for a long time. Be gentle with me.
~/*\~/*\~/*\~
I see it - I dream about them. So much, so often. So many memories that flicker through my mind when I close my eyes in my semblance of sleep. When did I last sleep? Four, five days ago was it? I don't know - one day merges into another for me now. I haven't been outside for even longer than that. How I miss the sun. But, Zelda says I must stay. She doesn't want me to go out. She fears what I may do; so do I.
My mind is befuddled with everything, but yet, I can still see each memory as clear as crystal. Right now, I am looking back to when I woke up to find myself grown. As if that was not shock enough, I then had to wander out into a world that had been cleaved in two in seven short years. I had to see the people I had once known, tortured and twisted, turned into something cruel where they had once been something kind. With their wills broken and their lives on hold whilst they bowed down to a man who had no right to tell them to do so.
No right at all.
But no...not only he was to blame for that. It was me who did it - who gathered the Sacred Spiritual Stones, who opened the Door of Time. It's my fault that all my friends, that everything I ever knew, was damaged. Hurt, ripped, the land raped and the people scarred forever by the actions of a man who gained power he shouldn't have had.
What if I'm the same? I know I have dwelt on it - wondered long and hard whether I just want to be the 'Hero'. Whether what I really want is to be the next dark King. Zelda would be a difficult adversary, but I could use other means to get there. Seduction is a cruel trick to play, but she would fall for it. I know from her glances and smiles very well what she thinks of me.
No! She is my friend. And to hurt Malon further than she has been by doing so would be the highest cruelty.
Malon - seven years of slave labour, of leering faces staring down at her as she grew from a girl to a young woman. Years of fighting off advance after advance from the bewitched Ingo, and his fellow Ganondorf followers, and being beaten for not submitting. Praying day after day for rescue, whilst I was shut up cosily in the Sacred Realm, protected from all hurt. And then, when I did come, she was so eager to see me, forcing her worn body to smile and greet me happily. To...to care for me and teach me how it was that my new body worked.
I blush to think on it. And it hurts because I know I have done wrong. I should not have allowed myself...it is impossible for me to live as a normal person. I am the one who is not to be touched, only idolised and put away in a glass box until another place needs to help of the 'Great and noble Hero of Time'.
It's funny. I don't feel so 'great and noble' when I awake in the middle of the night, pictures of death and destruction burning my eyes, snivelling and crying like a little lost child. For that is what I am; a child in a man's body. And I want to go back. Let me truly be a Kokiri again, so that I do not have to grow up. So that I could never have felt the pains of attempting to love, the injuries of war, seen the hatred that can stem from the smallest of things.
I want to be a child again. Is it too much to ask?
I want it that none of this ever happened. That I never had those dreams, that a fairy never came to me. I wish that I am back in my tree house, still being teased and known as 'Mr no Fairy.' At least then, my childhood companions would still be alive. So many...so many dead when I went back after those seven years. I remember it well.
Walking through the dark archway, and fending off the giant deku-baba that had rooted itself at the entrance. And then, looking on, looking out through the glare of the bright sunshine. Such irony, that the weather show no compassion at all to the dead. There they were - tiny bodies, clutching their slingshots and deku-shields, obviously having pitched a desperate defence against Ganondorf's forces. And having lost miserably. And, not only were they dead, but there, not three feet away, some of the lingering dark creatures dared to deface the bodies.
The anger grew in me then. Welled up and exploded; I am afraid of myself when I am angry.
I am like the Fierce Deity of the mask when I am angry. I kill, without mercy, I cannot distinguish well between necessity and the sheer pleasure of death.
I am afraid. All the time. What am I? Why did destiny choose me, when I cannot even begin to comprehend myself?
I don't know who I am.
I know nothing.
They call me the 'Hero'. I suppose that's me. Right? The 'Hero'. I don't feel like much of a 'Hero'. Heroes don't get ill do they? Heroes don't cry like little lost children, as they recount the deaths of hundreds over and over again every night. Heroes are not shut away from the world, not kept out of the sun, because their ruler believes them a threat.
A threat to the people - and to themselves.
What do Heroes do?
All I did was kill. I am no 'Hero'. I am evil; I took lives. Yes, if I said this to anyone, they would say that it was a necessity. That I saved many millions of others with those lives.
But what about the good people who I didn't save? Because I couldn't be there. Because I was too weak, I had to stop and rest. Because for seven years I was not even part of the world. So many good people dead - some without graves or markers to remember them by. Others too mangled and ruined to be given names to, buried in mass graves and then labelled with guessed identities. The Kokiri, Hylians, Zorans, Gorons, Sheikah, and even the few Gerudo who challenged Ganondorf.
Dead.
I am dead. Inside. I do not feel anything.
Wait, that is a lie. I do.
Despair.
Pain.
Anger.
Hatred.
I feel all the dark things. It's as though I'm slipping into darkness, and because I am the 'Hero', no one can save me. No one. Not even the Goddesses themselves, or the Tri-Force. They are higher powers, more important than I. I have false status. I am not a 'Hero'. I'm just a boy who dreamed a dream, gained a fairy, and saw a young Princess. I did as she told me, not thinking for myself. Aren't heroes supposed to be smart as well as strong? If so, I've fallen short of both marks. My brains are lacking, and my swordplay leaves much to be desired. I have lived on luck.
Luck that I have borrowed from all the people who did not need it. Because it had left them when they died. More precisely, when they were killed. And most did not gain the dignity of a clean death. Men were tortured and worked for slaves, until they dropped and eventually died. Women were the same, but also used for pleasure, for little toys of no consequence.
Oh Goddesses! Why? Why did you not come and save your people? Why place it all on a weak, feeble, useless mortal like me?
I saw them all suffering, I saw them dying, and I did nothing. My mind was focused (stupidly) on playing the knight in shining armour, and saving the Princess and Malon. I cared not for the nameless dead then - I only listened to Sheik for the melodies he would give me. Sheik - Zelda has finally told me the real truth. That Sheik died out in the Desert, trying to follow me and warn me of the perils there. Ganondorf captured him.
I see the images now of his death. It is not for the eyes of innocence that the lucky children who were born after the dark times have. But all those who lived through it will know the pictures well. Torture, slavery, manual tasks. Carrying weights far too heavy for his light Sheikah frame. Being whipped and punched and kicked and bitten, scratched and pushed around until he finally snapped and fell to the ground. And even then, he would be picked up once more, and forced to carry on walking, to keep on and on. To carry on until exhaustion left, and was replaced by living death.
NO! The darkness in me relishes these thoughts. It calls out that I can make this happen. But no, I couldn't make it stop, that doesn't mean I want it again. Please, help me.
Help me.
I am afraid of myself. I am darkness concealed in light. I am weakness hidden within strength. I am a coward masked by the name of 'Hero'. I do not deserve to live. But I have not yet earned the privilege to escape my suffering into death.
Someone help me. I deserve no help though. Why do I ask? I will not receive. I did not help all those who died to make sure I succeeded.
Sheik...he is prominent in my mind. Perhaps I loved him - I know not. I have never been able to discover love. I cannot feel love - I cannot feel. I am only a ball of hatred and anger and pain and confusion, ready to explode and take down many innocents with me.
I cannot let myself do that. Haven't I done enough?
I'm so scared. My mind...it shows things I don't want to see.
I'm always afraid.
I'm afraid of myself.
Because, I know one day, I will have to leave this bed again. I will have to go outside and see the sun, see the people who adulate me because they believe I am good. They believe I am valiant and righteous. They don't know of my furtive thoughts of darkness. And I pray that they never find out. When I snap, I will be dead. In the real sense, not merely the sense that I am already dead by. I will kill myself. The people don't need another dark King. Not when they already have their false 'Hero'.
Don't make me see them again.
I dread to think what I may do.
Zelda...she is right to keep me here. Thanks to her highness.
She understands.
She knows what I am.
And she is as afraid as I am.
~/*\~/*\~/*\~
Please R+R. Tell me what you thought. I'm feeling a bit drained by this to be honest. Will have to go listen to something upbeat to cheer myself up...
Soda
Disclaimer: Belong to Miyamoto and Nintendo. I don't claim any of the characters pertained to be my own.
Link muses on the past. I wrote this for a challenge, in under an hour, listening to a medley of depressing music. And it sure does show through in this. First proper angst for a long time. Be gentle with me.
~/*\~/*\~/*\~
I see it - I dream about them. So much, so often. So many memories that flicker through my mind when I close my eyes in my semblance of sleep. When did I last sleep? Four, five days ago was it? I don't know - one day merges into another for me now. I haven't been outside for even longer than that. How I miss the sun. But, Zelda says I must stay. She doesn't want me to go out. She fears what I may do; so do I.
My mind is befuddled with everything, but yet, I can still see each memory as clear as crystal. Right now, I am looking back to when I woke up to find myself grown. As if that was not shock enough, I then had to wander out into a world that had been cleaved in two in seven short years. I had to see the people I had once known, tortured and twisted, turned into something cruel where they had once been something kind. With their wills broken and their lives on hold whilst they bowed down to a man who had no right to tell them to do so.
No right at all.
But no...not only he was to blame for that. It was me who did it - who gathered the Sacred Spiritual Stones, who opened the Door of Time. It's my fault that all my friends, that everything I ever knew, was damaged. Hurt, ripped, the land raped and the people scarred forever by the actions of a man who gained power he shouldn't have had.
What if I'm the same? I know I have dwelt on it - wondered long and hard whether I just want to be the 'Hero'. Whether what I really want is to be the next dark King. Zelda would be a difficult adversary, but I could use other means to get there. Seduction is a cruel trick to play, but she would fall for it. I know from her glances and smiles very well what she thinks of me.
No! She is my friend. And to hurt Malon further than she has been by doing so would be the highest cruelty.
Malon - seven years of slave labour, of leering faces staring down at her as she grew from a girl to a young woman. Years of fighting off advance after advance from the bewitched Ingo, and his fellow Ganondorf followers, and being beaten for not submitting. Praying day after day for rescue, whilst I was shut up cosily in the Sacred Realm, protected from all hurt. And then, when I did come, she was so eager to see me, forcing her worn body to smile and greet me happily. To...to care for me and teach me how it was that my new body worked.
I blush to think on it. And it hurts because I know I have done wrong. I should not have allowed myself...it is impossible for me to live as a normal person. I am the one who is not to be touched, only idolised and put away in a glass box until another place needs to help of the 'Great and noble Hero of Time'.
It's funny. I don't feel so 'great and noble' when I awake in the middle of the night, pictures of death and destruction burning my eyes, snivelling and crying like a little lost child. For that is what I am; a child in a man's body. And I want to go back. Let me truly be a Kokiri again, so that I do not have to grow up. So that I could never have felt the pains of attempting to love, the injuries of war, seen the hatred that can stem from the smallest of things.
I want to be a child again. Is it too much to ask?
I want it that none of this ever happened. That I never had those dreams, that a fairy never came to me. I wish that I am back in my tree house, still being teased and known as 'Mr no Fairy.' At least then, my childhood companions would still be alive. So many...so many dead when I went back after those seven years. I remember it well.
Walking through the dark archway, and fending off the giant deku-baba that had rooted itself at the entrance. And then, looking on, looking out through the glare of the bright sunshine. Such irony, that the weather show no compassion at all to the dead. There they were - tiny bodies, clutching their slingshots and deku-shields, obviously having pitched a desperate defence against Ganondorf's forces. And having lost miserably. And, not only were they dead, but there, not three feet away, some of the lingering dark creatures dared to deface the bodies.
The anger grew in me then. Welled up and exploded; I am afraid of myself when I am angry.
I am like the Fierce Deity of the mask when I am angry. I kill, without mercy, I cannot distinguish well between necessity and the sheer pleasure of death.
I am afraid. All the time. What am I? Why did destiny choose me, when I cannot even begin to comprehend myself?
I don't know who I am.
I know nothing.
They call me the 'Hero'. I suppose that's me. Right? The 'Hero'. I don't feel like much of a 'Hero'. Heroes don't get ill do they? Heroes don't cry like little lost children, as they recount the deaths of hundreds over and over again every night. Heroes are not shut away from the world, not kept out of the sun, because their ruler believes them a threat.
A threat to the people - and to themselves.
What do Heroes do?
All I did was kill. I am no 'Hero'. I am evil; I took lives. Yes, if I said this to anyone, they would say that it was a necessity. That I saved many millions of others with those lives.
But what about the good people who I didn't save? Because I couldn't be there. Because I was too weak, I had to stop and rest. Because for seven years I was not even part of the world. So many good people dead - some without graves or markers to remember them by. Others too mangled and ruined to be given names to, buried in mass graves and then labelled with guessed identities. The Kokiri, Hylians, Zorans, Gorons, Sheikah, and even the few Gerudo who challenged Ganondorf.
Dead.
I am dead. Inside. I do not feel anything.
Wait, that is a lie. I do.
Despair.
Pain.
Anger.
Hatred.
I feel all the dark things. It's as though I'm slipping into darkness, and because I am the 'Hero', no one can save me. No one. Not even the Goddesses themselves, or the Tri-Force. They are higher powers, more important than I. I have false status. I am not a 'Hero'. I'm just a boy who dreamed a dream, gained a fairy, and saw a young Princess. I did as she told me, not thinking for myself. Aren't heroes supposed to be smart as well as strong? If so, I've fallen short of both marks. My brains are lacking, and my swordplay leaves much to be desired. I have lived on luck.
Luck that I have borrowed from all the people who did not need it. Because it had left them when they died. More precisely, when they were killed. And most did not gain the dignity of a clean death. Men were tortured and worked for slaves, until they dropped and eventually died. Women were the same, but also used for pleasure, for little toys of no consequence.
Oh Goddesses! Why? Why did you not come and save your people? Why place it all on a weak, feeble, useless mortal like me?
I saw them all suffering, I saw them dying, and I did nothing. My mind was focused (stupidly) on playing the knight in shining armour, and saving the Princess and Malon. I cared not for the nameless dead then - I only listened to Sheik for the melodies he would give me. Sheik - Zelda has finally told me the real truth. That Sheik died out in the Desert, trying to follow me and warn me of the perils there. Ganondorf captured him.
I see the images now of his death. It is not for the eyes of innocence that the lucky children who were born after the dark times have. But all those who lived through it will know the pictures well. Torture, slavery, manual tasks. Carrying weights far too heavy for his light Sheikah frame. Being whipped and punched and kicked and bitten, scratched and pushed around until he finally snapped and fell to the ground. And even then, he would be picked up once more, and forced to carry on walking, to keep on and on. To carry on until exhaustion left, and was replaced by living death.
NO! The darkness in me relishes these thoughts. It calls out that I can make this happen. But no, I couldn't make it stop, that doesn't mean I want it again. Please, help me.
Help me.
I am afraid of myself. I am darkness concealed in light. I am weakness hidden within strength. I am a coward masked by the name of 'Hero'. I do not deserve to live. But I have not yet earned the privilege to escape my suffering into death.
Someone help me. I deserve no help though. Why do I ask? I will not receive. I did not help all those who died to make sure I succeeded.
Sheik...he is prominent in my mind. Perhaps I loved him - I know not. I have never been able to discover love. I cannot feel love - I cannot feel. I am only a ball of hatred and anger and pain and confusion, ready to explode and take down many innocents with me.
I cannot let myself do that. Haven't I done enough?
I'm so scared. My mind...it shows things I don't want to see.
I'm always afraid.
I'm afraid of myself.
Because, I know one day, I will have to leave this bed again. I will have to go outside and see the sun, see the people who adulate me because they believe I am good. They believe I am valiant and righteous. They don't know of my furtive thoughts of darkness. And I pray that they never find out. When I snap, I will be dead. In the real sense, not merely the sense that I am already dead by. I will kill myself. The people don't need another dark King. Not when they already have their false 'Hero'.
Don't make me see them again.
I dread to think what I may do.
Zelda...she is right to keep me here. Thanks to her highness.
She understands.
She knows what I am.
And she is as afraid as I am.
~/*\~/*\~/*\~
Please R+R. Tell me what you thought. I'm feeling a bit drained by this to be honest. Will have to go listen to something upbeat to cheer myself up...
Soda
