Title: If You Love Me
Fandom: Legend Of Zelda: Skyward Sword [During & Slightly After The Game, if all goes according to plans]
Characters: Groose, Pipit, OC
Genre: Family/Romance
Rating: High T [Language and Adult Themes]
Summary: When Pipit was young, he had a sister. A little girl, just a year younger than him, named Alouette. She was the light of his world, the light of his mother's world. The day that she fell off the edge of Skyloft, down below the clouds, was the day that he swore never to let anyone go unprotected again. It was the day his life changed. When another girl, when Zelda falls below the clouds and he begins to hope that perhaps his little sister is alive. Little does he know, she is, and she's about to be rescued by the most unexpected of fellows.
Pairings: Groose/OC, Pipit/Karane, mentions of Link/Zelda
Note: The prologue is told in first person, from Pipit's and then Alouette's point of view. The rest of the story will be told in third person and will shift focus between Alouette and Pipit.
Disclaimer: I do not own Zelda. I don't own anything but the plot, Alouette, and Kaze, who might not even appear in this story.
Prologue: Alouette & Pipit
When I was younger, my mother would tell me the same thing, day in and day out. 'Don't stand so close to the edge, Pipit. You don't know what could happen if you fall off, Pipit. The knights won't always be quick enough to save you, Pipit.' And of course, as a young boy with an adventurous spirit, I never really paid her any mind. After all, the knights always saved people who fell off Skyloft, so what harm could there possibly be in sitting with your feet dangling off the edge, admiring the view. And besides, the sky was so vast and everything was so beautiful.
I couldn't help myself.
My little sister was worse than I was. From the second she was born, she had an obsession with the sky and the clouds and there beauty. She would spend hours leaning just a little too far over the edge, watching the clouds below us twist and turn and my mother would run over and snatch her from the edge with a cry when she was about to topple over.
Sometimes my mother didn't make it in time, and my sister would turn up a few hours after wandering from home with one of the knights and my mother would cling to her and whisper:
Alouette, I love you, Alouette
Alouette, I'll love you everyday
Alouette, my princess, Alouette
Alouette, don't ever go away
And that was how days would proceed for our family. My feet dangling off the edge while Alouette leaned over just a little too far, both of us looking at the clouds that no one could touch while my mother stood behind us, worrying. It wasn't until the stormy season, when Alouette was two or three, that everything changed.
Most children stay in their house during their first storm. Most children are terrified by their first storm. They way black clouds engulf Skyloft, making it nearly impossible to see. The chill of the wind beating against the walls of the houses and the way the rain didn't fall so much as just hang in the air. I remember being terrified during my first storm, and my mother would huddle up in the back of the house with me, telling me that it would be alright. But Alouette, she was different. Alouette was always different.
The wind had died down to a low hum, but the air was still wet and the sky was still dark, when Alouette, only three years old, took her chance. She snuck out of the house while mother was occupied with me, a four year old boy whining about wanting to see what it was like outside while the rain hung in the air. It took us at least an hour to notice that she was gone and, looking back, I'm certain that it was too late to find her by then. But a four year old by is ever hopeful, as is a mother, and we went looking anyway.
We searched for ages in the sticky air, banging on doors and asking if anyone had seen our Alouette. After a while, I hugged my mother and told her that Alouette would turn up. She would be fine and one of the knights would have found her. And mother would sing to her and everything would be alright. But, and I didn't know it at the time, knights never flew during storms, because it wasn't safe. That meant that Alouette was lost to the edge of Skyloft.
And when something fell off the edge without being saved by a knight, it was impossible to find.
Our little Alouette was impossible to find. Lost to the darkness. Lost to the clouds that she so longed to touch. Perhaps, I told myself often as I found myself thinking about her at the academy, she was lost forever. I was surprised to find that she wasn't. I was surprised to find, when another girl went missing in a similar fashion, that there was a chance she was alive.
This is the story, so I've been told, of how my sister was found thanks to the help of a boy who hardly seemed helpful at all.
This is how my little Lark came home.
-.-.-.-
For as long as I can remember, I have had dreams about the sky. About the blanket of clouds that forever floats above us, never fully vanishing, and I've spent a great deal of time thinking about what could be above the clouds, always just out of sight. I've been told that it is foolish to dream of such things, and that I should keep my head closer to the ground, where it belongs, but often it is all that I can think of. After all, there isn't much to do in the forest, other than protect the Kikwis as best as I can.
I was told, by Yerbal one day, that the sky is where I came from. He said that one day, I fell from the clouds and landed in Lake Flora, and that I was saved by the Water Dragon, who took pity on me. Though rather or not this is true is debated by all the other Kikwis, each of which claim to have found me in various locations in the forest. But they all agree that I was quite young when they found me. Only two or three years old. And there's no debate about the fact that Bucha took care of me after finding me.
I don't remember anything about where I lived before the forest, so I assume that what Yerbal told me was correct. I assume that I did fall from the sky and that there must be more people up there, but I can never be certain. All I remember is that my name was Alouette, I knew a boy by the name of Pipit, and there was a song. I like to believe that Pipit was my older brother and I sometimes imagine him as a boy who looks like me, with brown hair and big blue eyes. I often imagine him singing to me the song I remember, though I do not remember the exact lyrics.
If you love me, tell me that you love me
If you don't, please tell me that you do
And if you love me, will you always love me
If you won't, then what am I to do?
I know it's foolish, but sometimes I tie letters to the ankles of birds and hope that they could fly above the clouds. They never have, but sometimes I wish they would. By the time I was around seventeen, I had given up any hope that I would ever find my brother or my home, or even a way back home. And that was when it changed.
First there was a woman. Then there was a boy. And finally there was another boy. All of them from the sky, they told me. This is the story of how I found my big brother. This is the story of how I went home.
This is how I found out what home was.