Iblis, the duke, and any other original characters in here are copyrighted to me.
...
Chapter 4: Self-condemnation and over-compensation (are the rule rather than the exception)
Let it never be said that Sheik was not a patient man.
(He wasn't, but that was not the point striving to be made here)
Link firmly mired in suffering at his side, he sat through hours of socializing-cum-swordplay.
Rumors were fierce, since just a few nights ago Link had been escorting Lady Zelda.
He was patient, had waited and waited and waited for a hero to emerge. Seven years of his life, for one he wasn't even sure would come at all.
The boy he'd met running through the graveyard, just a little kid…
(With some annoyance he recalled the other boy who he'd met in the graveyard. The one a certain Hero sold a mask to.)
He'd been sitting on a ledge when a person walked in. Light steps over the grass and cobble, into the dreary resting place.
They stopped in front of the last row.
Above the Shadow temple loomed, watching.
With uninterested eyes, he watched the boy awaken the Poe brothers. Still detached, he watched them batter his little body.
Aloofness took a backseat when the boy pulled a sword - no more than a long knife to his elder - and parried the lanterns, snaked it through half-there shadows of souls.
Head tilted up, facing away from his grigori, he watched the Poe both crumble and transcend after spilling a final secret.
They both watched their lanterns go out and the remnants of their lives disappear.
Then the child pulled out a little green ocarina and played.
One certain lullaby.
He found a sudden and powerful interest in the boy's exploits.
Snaking down from the cliff, he approached the fresh open crypt.
Coming back out, the one he was waiting for was battered and dirty with slime smeared over his face. His tunic was torn. Sheik's first look at Link was not an impressive sight.
Then Link brought the ocarina back up to his lips and played.
Sheik offered him lodging for the night.
When they met again, Link was nursing a scraped knee. Sheik had found himself wondering whether all his meetings with the outsider were destined to be laced with antiseptic.
He learned then, that Link was from the forest.
Link told him with bright, excited eyes and muted words, of a forest where only children lived…
He told him, with faded shine, of a great tree who watched over them and a girl he loved very dearly named Saria, though love was not the word he used.
And Sheik told him about night birds, and magic, and how falling stars faded faster.
(Link thought that was funny.)
The next time they met, Impa was there. She disappeared before Link could see her.
Sheik found out just who the outsider was.
With some melancholy, he realized the matter at hand.
An errand boy for the King's daughter. Once he completed his task he would disappear from the muted world where they resided.
After that they didn't see each other again for a very long time.
Sheik grew to hate blue eyes.
The world's muted colors switched to autumn - the only time the colors were allowed to scorch and flame. Faded blue he resented was replaced by magnificent, scarring red.
Rivers of it washed from the heavens and battered him as a doll.
Light faded from his vision. His legs grew weak and he found himself on his knees, always.
Zelda was ephemeral.
Her elegant broken body trapped between the sky and so-hated earth by his trembling hands, the skin of her beautiful neck, split. He drank in the crying evanescent soul. Over the body he wove a spell of breath, stole it away to hide in the darkness.
Then he ripped apart the fools responsible.
That was, of course, how he met Ganondorf.
Depraved bastard he was, stepping up to see the corpses of his minions and the purple dyed hands of a murderous shade.
He applauded. He thought it droll.
He offered Sheik a place in the maelstrom.
Zelda's heart cried out against it.
His knees touched the tainted cobble. Blond hair kissed the dirt.
Ganondorf found his hair an oddity. Constantly touching it, tilting it under the firelight.
He stated, with some delight, that it reminded him of the little girl from the courtyard…
Sheik felt sick - he told him so. Kept going about how he so detested the memory of the royal family that kept him in bondage.
Ganondorf got another laugh out of it.
(He thought it funny, too - he had changed his chains as one might old bandages.)
The sickening part was he hadn't lied.
Inside of his heart, Zelda let out another soft cry.
When he was fifteen, Ganon had brought the level of making monsters to an art form.
Something completely new - a spell to draw out darkness. In the case of one without darkness… something to create it.
An antimatter.
They wondered would happen to one only made of darkness.
Sheik met his that day. It radiated light.
Ganondorf was pleased.
Sheik hated it.
Sitting about as a useless thing, he hated it all the more. It was reminding him of everything he couldn't have.
There in the corner, radiating, it was his false moon and a mirror to shatter.
But he was clever, and found it use soon enough.
Zelda's body was still hidden away and frozen in time.
In the darkness of the graveyard he fused the light with the corpse.
Somewhere between where it had been and where it should be, a doll sat on the floor. Its face was caught betwixt his and Zelda's. It wasn't… entirely human.
It would do.
He ripped the soul from his.
Blue eyes again met red.
Looking at the lighter shade of sky, he remembered why he'd begun to hate the color.
Their bodies could fuse. Probably not for long, likely to fade in time as Zelda overtook the shell.
It was an accident. A complete accident… a convenient one.
Zelda hid away in his heart again until he had the chance to bring her far away. Tucked away in the capable hands of a fire-haired noble was where Sheik left her.
Zelda told him, betwixt the tears and the screams, that she hated him.
He figured he deserved it.
The next few years weren't so different than if he'd been a regular sheikah - sneaking, spying, often killing. The frequency of the killing was the major variant.
And, of course, what he didn't do - that was a gaping chasm of difference. Always little things. Lost information here, a village warned before the fire there… the poison not all drained from the King's goblet. Just enough to make his stomach turn.
He sat in the shade above Ganon's throne, long legs pulled up to his chest, perched as a twisted songbird.
Whispers spread in the hellfire of the Great King's murderous pet. Red-eyed beast, with fangs and claws, that could fly through the night…
People were so dramatic.
He drug the blade over another dramatic person's throat. He made it deep and quick, because Ganondorf liked people to suffer, and fading so fast left little to feel.
Rubies spilled out under his fingers.
The witches were suspicious of him. He didn't like them, they didn't like him.
Their dislike spawned from his attitude towards Twinrova.
Specifically her mammary attributes.
To top it off, they were suspicious he was gay.
He decided that at four hundred, senility had finally set in. It was convenient.
Leading them on was a bit more taxing. His palate had no taste for the wine, his eye no desire for the beauty. The splendor of life afforded to him at the top was meaningless.
Often, he found himself hoping it would end - the war, his life, something. Anything.
He didn't even care, one way or the other, for the hands running over his body.
His mind drifted far while his body reacted. Faceless lovers kept fading, just as the flickering stars he spoke of to a boy so long ago.
There was a traitor in the ranks. One Sheik had taken to bed, more than once. They weren't particularly close, but he wasn't a terrible person. He had family, he'd told Sheik, and working for Ganondorf kept them alive and fed. They wanted him to come home to them.
Of course, when he was caught trying to break a barrier, it was brought up. That he might have done it before… and he had. He had shattered the Shadow barrier, Farore knows how.
He never could have done it on his own.
"Sheik! Sheik must have aided the traitor!"
It wasn't as if it would have been the first time he'd betrayed a retainer, or so they reasoned.
He told them, in his most level tone, that they were incorrigibly wrong.
Ganondorf, being the man he was, sat back with steepled fingers and chuckled. All was a game to him.
He came up with a perfectly wonderful idea, entertaining and productive at once. Immediately smitten with it, he pronounced judgment.
"Kill him, Sheik."
Sheik stared into the face of the King.
The next time he saw Zelda, she had grown older. Her face was still between what it should be and what his was.
She looked into his eyes and cried soulless.
Wanting to disagree but left with nothing to say, he settled a hand over the scar on her throat. She flinched away from his fingers, his always-red fingers and sobbed.
He wondered if sensualism really did murder the soul.
There was enough evidence for it - the King sat huddled in the cells of Ganon's citadel, with cold eyes that refused to look at him even before the final year.
He spirited the Lady away, far away.
The greater fay would be the next to shelter her.
On the dawn of his eighteenth year, he wondered when the prescribed hero would wake. He wondered often in the first years, daily even. He wondered about a world with color other than static red and illumination from something besides hellfire.
He remembered his dear moon and lovely golden sun, forbidden to him though it was. He closed his eyes and felt the phantom warmth of its caress.
He remembered Impa sitting beside him and teaching him songs, to play, to sing for the night's audience.
From her lessons he had taught Link how to breathe.
He wondered over the Hero who could bring it all back, selfless and mighty and brave.
(He never once considered it would be a kind hero, for how could he expect the hero to be kind? Who with such might and sufferance spawned from the suffering could be kind?)
Days faded with the unseen sunset - dark clouds spiraled and conspired to hide him from his forbidden fruit.
He wondered less about the hero and more about what he could do. What he should do. To wait for a hero that would never come, or…
His fingers curled around the serrated knife.
It wouldn't have been the first time…
His loyalty was unquestioned. He was Ganondorf's favorite, marked with a collar. It made sense, really, since he was but a pet.
Only outside the castle could he cover it, but he could never take it off. It was the proof. Ganon owned him.
Again his soul forfeit, Sheik fingered the collar. Rough and fine at once, cutting against his neck. It hurt him.
… Not enough.
He wished it was a garrote.
Sun fell and rose in quick succession.
It burnt him as fire, blinding reflections from the ice froze the light in his eyes.
Atop Zora's domain, he again watched his world end.
The weight of hell settled in his gut when he left the realm of ice.
Even more redeads had settled in the square. The Occult man was delighted at the freshest emergence of Poe, greeting Sheik and his catch with a dark smile that drowned any concept of fear.
Paid and ever-unsatisfied, Sheik left and wondered, as shrill screaming echoed behind him, what the old bat actually did with the ghosts.
Ganondorf grabbed the collar when he came close enough, his customary method of manipulating Sheik to where he wanted him.
He was sat at the base of the throne.
Dead eyes gazed, bored, threatening, to the man who quivered and looked from him to the king while he spoke.
Ganon petted Sheik's hair as one might pet a hound, smirking and leaning his head on his fist.
Whatever the man did or didn't want, he was denied.
Orders fell to him to escort their guest out.
Sheik brought him to the front door. Of course.
They discovered with some dismay that the front step dropped off to lava.
Sheik aimed and hoped the man could fly.
… a few ribs were probably broke, maybe some mental scaring. Likely a phobia of strong blonds. He'd be fine.
Sheik considered this, twirling a bit of hair.
Ganondorf wasn't happy. Sheik apologized and promised to practice harder, lest he overshoot again.
He sighed and gazed out the window.
Light blossomed in the city.
A sword was held up in defiance to him, the light he was denied spilling without reservation over the stranger.
The sun's blood lit his face and made Sheik remember something from very long ago.
They spoke and, as illusions must when seen through, he disappeared. To his credit, the hero did not dawdle long - though a fruitless search was led in the barren temple where time didn't matter.
It was terrible, really. He had always figured that boy had died. He had hoped, sometimes, that he had made it back to that secret place in the forest, and knew nothing of the tumultuous outside. The constant of thunderheads who refused to yield rain…
He hated it. A child who was supposed to be an eternal light was actually a star brightening to supernova.
Fast and scalding.
He would set the world on fire, just as Ganon had, incinerating every obstacle in his path. He would obliterate, and transmute it to a phoenix.
And when Ganondorf and the rest of his world had been reduced to ash, the supernova would fade to inexistence.
He fingered a dagger.
It wouldn't have been the first time.
Rumors flew as shattered glass, falling around the room with the same grace.
Sheik kept touching the butter knife and sighing.
Link could relate. He tried eating politely - Zelda had given him lessons, Sheik had smacked his fingers during those lessons, but he still lacked a certain grace - and not staring, and did his best to reply when addressed.
(Sheik had answered for him a few times. And scared away a few overly insistent conversationalists.)
The King sat at the head of the table of course, and refused to so much as glance in their direction. He spoke at length with the Duke of Weiss, both glancing to Zelda on occasion. Link tried to edge the knife away from Sheik, who had noticed the moment it started.
Other guests spoke to Sheik, albeit nervously. Darunia was an odd presence at the table and an exception the rule, greeting Link with his usual warmness and chatting, very comfortably, with the drag queen.
Link wondered if he knew.
They were talking about music now, something that made Sheik relax and Link could keep up with. "… the sheikah use stringed instruments, traditionally, but in Kakariko percussion instruments are also long-used."
"Yes, I recall a tale that our ancestors met and traded songs with the first villagers." Darunia replied in an amiable voice, gesturing to the hall. "Sounded like a real, wild party. Nothing like these." the last words were of conspiration, gesturing to the room at large where, indeed, the party was quite refined. And very dull.
Technically it was a dinner.
Sheik smirked back, looking like the devil himself. "Indeed. If only they could just put out the red throw and be done with it."
"It's never that easy, Asima." Darunia snorted. "Usually this much fuss is for a reason. Suppose the King is trying to make a strong impression, though I couldn't imagine why unless…" He hummed.
Another glance to the King showed him addressing Zelda, at his side, and then the Duke on his other.
"You think he might want to betroth the Duke to Zelda?" Link mumbled, biting his lip.
Darunia gave him an appreciative glance.
He always was a smart kid.
"She is well past the age." Sheik said it so calmly, conversationally, that Link could almost believe he wasn't twirling the butter knife in front of his breast.
"But he's kind of… old for her." Link pointed out.
"On the contrary, the Duke is very young. It is rather uncommon for one to be in power at his age." Sheik replied, still fondling the blade.
Darunia scooted in a such a way that he could move to restrain him. To Link it looked it might be necessary quite soon.
The King stood at the head and with his usual regal pleasure, announced that the Duke would be staying whilst he looked for a suitable Lady in the courts.
Sheik had to be restrained.
"I'm fine, Link, really." His insistence was not reassuring. Link continued to walk.
"You need to get out of town for awhile."
"We've been here but two days."
"I just call it as I see it." He informed the man slung over his shoulder, hastily dressed and a bit homicidal.
"And where do you suggest we go?"
"Wasn't really thinking about it when I grabbed you." He admitted, bringing up the hand not holding Sheik to run through his bangs.
He meandered through Castletown and down a side alley before releasing the very irritable Sheikah.
"You didn't have to carry me you know." He huffed, crossed his arms, and looked very much like a petulant teenager.
"… sorry." Link tried hard not to laugh. "Walk with me?"
Sheik raised a brow. "Not worried I'll go at your virgin flesh in a dark alley?"
… hm. "Yeah, now that you mention it. But I should warn you - I was scarfing down garlic at that dinner. I must reek of it. Not the most appetizing meal."
"Oh, well then."
Liar.
They shared a short laugh and meandered down the back street.
Scars of silver in the night guided their path, moon almost-devoured by its shade.
Harmony and balance.
Their steps fell to tandem. Link twirled and sidestepped in idle tune, tilting his head so his ears better caught the music drifting in.
Just beyond the alley's mouth young lovers twirled and held each other to the notes of a lute.
Sheik twisted his lips up in a wry grin.
Link, meandering about as he was, didn't catch it.
"You know, Zelda was saying just the other day that you would have to learn to dance. After all, when one attends so many formal parties…"
Link looked back. Sheik had his devil-grin on.
"… erm…"
"Come here."
A dubious stare, "… and why would I go over there?" Quoth the nervous hero, for Sheik had a look of deviousness about him.
His eye glittered in the night. Rare-seen teeth flashed white as bleached bone and sharp as shattered ones. Hair fell about his face, sharpening and softening the harsh shade of night.
"Do it."
Whispering too dark and painted wicked, his words carried more weight than a crashing wave.
And so he stepped up, for what mortal could deny Sheik when he wanted something?
(He'd ask Zelda later. Hopefully she'd know.)
Sheik took up his hands and placed them as he'd seen men place their hands on their partners when they waltzed.
Those hands rested on him, then, and they began to move.
… Sheik put up with his trampled feet without complaint. But it wasn't as if it didn't hurt.
He did his best to get them to a point where they simply did not murder one another's toes. That rhythm found, dancing was much simpler (and far less painful).
(Later, Sheik would admit that lute music and a dark alley weren't the best environment to teach the waltz in. Link would agree and say something of the cramped quarters, and apologize for when he'd tripped over that pile of rubbish and brought Sheik down on him. Zelda would walk in at completely the wrong time, stand in the doorway, and look scandalized.)
"You know, sooner rather than later your absence will be questioned." Sheik murmured, taking the two steps away to the wall, where he settled.
True mystification alighted Link's features. "Why?"
A short laugh, "You are the hero, Link."
"Am not." Link mumbled, frowning and crossing his arms.
Sheik canted his head. "You're pouting."
"I'm scowling." He protested, eyes getting bigger, bottom lip jutting further out.
"If you say so."
Link moved a foot further into the shade. "I do-"
Sheik leaned forward over his crossed arms with eyes agleam-
Someone coughed from the alley's mouth.
They both turned their heads to look.
"Am I interrupting?" Impa asked, cocking her head with typical dryness.
"Uh… Just an argument. Sheik said I was pouting, I said I wasn't." Link answered in a perturbed tone, pursing his lips.
Not convinced of this obvious truth, Impa stood back and firmly absorbed the sight of the Hero of Time and her nephew in a dark alley, with less than a breath between them.
"… I see."
Skepticism ran in the family.
"In any case, the Duke was asking about a servant named Schön." Her tale began very calm and un-accusing.
They both balked.
She continued the narrative heedless, ending with, "… and so he was told, after having asked all about the castle, that we don't have a servant by that name."
… heh.
"When I caught wind of it, I began to wonder if you two perhaps knew something."
All silence, shameful silence.
"… um… maybe you couldn't find her because she is the attendant of Lady Asima?" Link offered.
Sheik pressed himself into the wall in a futile attempt to disappear.
Impa raised a brow. "Oh, I see." Then she stared at them, just to get that point well and truly across. She saw. Shameful callow youths that they were… "Well then, with that mystery resolved, Zelda would like to know when you'll be returning to the castle."
When Sheik's not ready to maim everyone with the silverware. Link wondered if that was an appropriate response.
"We will make our return in the morning, if that is acceptable, Impa." Voice very smooth, Sheik stepped away from him to flourish and bow.
"It is." Impa replied in a stern voice, "Shortly after dawn I expect to see you - both of you. Sleep well tonight." She walked off again, fading between the lights and darks of the town.
Link watched after, even knowing he wouldn't catch another glimpse.
Moments fell to silence and lost themselves to the shadows of town.
"… Where would you like to go?" Sheik asked.
Link hummed.
In retrospect, sleeping in the field probably wasn't the best idea.
Link sighed and stretched out, giving an idle stare to the stalchildren milling about the trunk. They moaned and grunted and clawed like a dogs after the moon.
"You know, there's a grotto around here." He said to Sheik, who cracked open his eye.
"… you know, I think I was already asleep." Muttered the less than happy sheikah.
"Sorry. Just thought it might be safer."
"Then perhaps you should have mentioned it before we were chased up the tree."
"How did you fall asleep?" Link demanded, pursing his lips in disbelief.
"Come here." Sheik moved over, so there was enough space for two in the cradle of the boughs.
So he did, laying pressed in beside the sheikah, and felt horrible awkwardness overtake him.
Typical defiance on his part, Sheik didn't feel any of it. "I fell asleep like this." He closed his eyes and drifted back off.
Link really would've liked to wake him back up, completely wake him, so he could feel it too, but he didn't. instead he looked to the sky, where moon peaked out between autumn leaves.
It too told him to shut up and sleep.
The scream of a rooster had him wind-milling his arms and attempting to fly forth from the tree like he himself was a cucco.
Sheik caught him by the collar. "This is why I didn't want you sleeping on that branch." He informed the still flailing hero.
"… Uh, yeah. Okay. Thanks." he mumbled, still not all-there.
He was hauled back into the relative safety of the boughs. Recollections of Impa and the promise they'd made her came over him while he looked at the rosy hues of sunrise. When he turned to bring the matter to Sheik he found him ready to depart.
Town square was abrim with people, loud and colorful and scary.
Sheik was curious to find moments after this realization, that he had a hero pressed against his side.
Another wave of boisterous life rolled past.
He twitched and pressed back because Farore, Link had it right trying to hide, there was no space to be found anywhere and didn't these people have any other place to be?
"I really don't like crowds." Link mumbled, barely-there in the din of the market.
"Ha. Funny." Because he shared the sentiment.
Sheik began leading them through the square. Glancing about, he found that they were all clamoring to see something… An old woman in their path looked up and gasped, pointing her cane to Sheik's face.
She shuddered and hissed.
Some of the din around them fell to curious stares and disapproving glares when the townspeople looked away from whatever captivated.
"Sheikah." Like the bane of light and existence.
It picked up around them, accusing and questioning, like curses and confusion.
This was going to go down hill very quickly.
They took off once the first curse was thrown.
Once they bypassed the gates - they made it up the ledge where Link had climbed as a child - and halfway through the castle field, Link stopped.
"What was that about?" He demanded in a soft voice, intense stare boring into Sheik's.
"I… I'm uncertain. Since our numbers have dwindled… there hasn't been such open hostility in years." Sheik confessed, slumping just a little and allowing himself to learn into the hands on his shoulders. He mumbled something to himself, so quiet Link only caught his voice.
Open?
"Why were they like that?"
"Hylians have always feared us." Sheik ran a hand through his hair, a habit he'd picked up from a certain fairy boy. "We are their protectors, but we also…"
"… oh. Right." He mumbled, closing his eyes. "I'm sorry. If I wasn't here you could've just…"
"Its fine." Sheik dismissed.
"Its not-"
"Link." He paused, and Sheik pressed a finger to his mouth. "Shut up." He did an about-face and again made for the castle with a call of 'we're going to be late'.
Link sprinted after him and felt like old times.
"… you know, I heard that young noble went into the town to day…"
"Oh, yes, that one? No one knows much…" Idle gossip between servants faded in and out of their ears on the way to the courtyard.
Zelda was watching dragonflies on flowers and Impa was watching where they entered.
The Lady greeted them warm as ever, going into all the pleasantries, sharp foil to Impa who jumped straight to matters.
"When Darunia came, he mentioned problems in the Dodongo's cavern. Gorons wandering off and the feeling of eyes on them when they enter." She'd rattled off, arms crossed over her chest. "Last night, news came that more had gone missing. Darunia left immediately. A message of his requesting aid arrived scant moments before you did."
"As you predicted," Zelda murmured faintly to her attendant, turning her gaze to them. "Sheik. There seems to be something very wrong here…"
"… and its in my field of expertise," He finished for her, sharp eyes catching every move.
It really was - Link almost always knew the danger going in, the place before scoped out by someone more suited to stealth. As for monsters, a rare day it was when he had to discover it as well as cut it up.
Zelda bit her lip and looked more troubled than before. "… I would like you to go with him, Link." She confessed, harried, turning to the jolted hero.
"Absolutely not." Sheik interjected, at the same time as Link's, "I will."
Naturally. He'd clasped Zelda's hand and nodded.
Simplicity not something he aspired to, Sheik glared fire and brimstone. "No. Absolutely no."
"You can't stop me, Sheik."
"Can't stop you-I-This is a bad idea - Impa, please back me up here!"
"Zelda. Sheik is more than capable of handling himself…"
Sheik sighed in relief.
A faint smirk crossed her features. "… but nevertheless, I would also be more comfortable if Link accompanied."
Sheik stared. Vile, twisted, evil… "… fine." His murmur, displeased and faint, was all that was necessary.
"Bags have been prepared for both of you." Zelda told them with a relieved smile, and Sheik realized he'd never had a case to decide.
Enter now the realm of excessive unhappy.
His irritation (per the usual) faded when she pressed a kiss to his cheek. "Come back safe. Both of you." She demanded in a soft murmur, replacing his cowl.
Impa reappeared - because apparently she had left - and handed them their bags, laying a hand on both of their heads. "You have the eyes that see and the ears that hear. Listen to what the world has to say and see through the cloak of night." Quoth she with solemn demeanor.
Lady and guardian gave their well wishes and saw the heroes off.
Sheik waited, very patiently, until they were well out into the field.
Once safely delivered from civilization, he delivered a brutal punch to Link's bicep.
"Ow!"
"This is your fault." Sheik hissed.
Link gave him a hurt look. "Am I so unwanted?" He asked, and Sheik gave another hiss, this time a clear 'yes'.
Ouch. He glanced away and pressed his lips together, and for the next five minutes did accurate portrayal of a kicked pup.
It didn't pass notice, and like any poor fool who kicks a pup by misguided intention, Sheik began to regret.
When he could no longer take the behavior persisted he swore. "Link! I… apologize…"
Way to sound like you're pulling teeth there, Sheik.
"-but I simply could not forgive myself if anything should befall you."
… can you repeat that, only loud?
While Link looked at him, still taken aback, he refused to return gaze. "I'll be fine. This isn't exactly the first time I've done this." He reminded with a light smile.
Sheik made a remark about mood swings, which he chose to ignore being the mature adult he was.
"I am aware, but that does not mean my heart was not in my throat with every temple." Sheik informed him, grumpy, and turned to glare.
"Actually, I wasn't talking about the temples, I was talking about the- … wait. Elaborate on that last part?"
"I was aware that you were no stranger to adventure?"
"No, the other part."
"There was no other part."
"Yes there was. You said something about your heart being in your throat-"
"No I didn't."
I thought sheikah couldn't lie, Link thought with little smile. He echoed it aloud.
Sheik twitched. "Alright, fine. I may have been… worried."
"Even at the forest temple?" He pressed.
Cue the sigh of the long-suffering sheikah, "Even then." Admitted him, and slanted Link an exasperated smile as if admitting no true annoyance.
"But… we'd only just met." With that, he concluded Sheik was weird. (… Yes, it really took him that long.)
As evidence to the previous claim, Sheik chuckled. "You don't recognize me?"
"You're Sheik." Link pointed out deadpan.
Another, wider smile of humor stretched over his face.
"Link. I suppose you won't remember, but shooting stars fade faster."
Link's eyes widened and he stopped, turning to face directly the Shadow.
"… you." He mumbled, then laughed, "You. Oh, Farore… I'm an idiot."
Sheik touched his shoulder and didn't disagree, moving and making Link move with him.
Ahead the stairs loomed.
Once they had gotten to town, Link, being Link, had branched off to visit Dampé.
Exasperated - haven't you had enough of the undead? - and all-too used to dealing with Link's bouts of irrational niceness - 'bouts' being a loose term for all day, every day - Sheik just made sure he remembered that little nondescript house in the village.
He really had come here to talk, but he knew he was the only one to visit, and he knew just what a kick the elder got from a race so he obliged and took to the corridors in pursuit.
Only on his best days could he keep pace with Dampé, and lately he was far from his best - he followed the blue foxfire, dancing around it when it burst into life right at his breast. He obliged the ghost lights that led him down a corridor that didn't quite seem right…
Oh, no.
No.
Ahead of him, the redeads shrieked to life.
…
He woke up in a place devoid of sky, or ground, or breath, and yet he was breathing.
There was no light but he could see all the colors of his skin and clothes and bag…
The void shifted. He looked up and saw a dark spectre with pale grey skin.
"Its you again…" His breath lit up the place as flame and the Tuscan red eyes burnt away the false-shade between them.
Light pulsed from his glossy mane. It swirled around him, alive as Link's pulsing heart, plumes tearing off his throat and becoming a shroud of feathers spread aloft. The wings of a raven.
"Yes."
"Who-what are you?" His voice caught and he remembered so long ago, when he did no speaking at all.
"The one who despairs," Like an admission of guilt to hang from the sky, such damning words so freely spoken. "I haven't been able to touch your world again. Until now." He smiled with lord-like shroud curling about him. It almost muffled the intimidation. "That one in the castle - the brightest one - will put my child to death for a burden not his own." He drifted closer in the space.
Link almost backed up, staring at the human crow.
"I thought it was strange," The demon began, imploring with wide eyes for Link's attention, "That a child like you had stumbled into my sphere of influence, rather that the Three would let you." He cocked his head like a bird, "And then you did it again, and overtook 'astounding' in my mind. Venturing into the menace of my temple, just having escaped the Well with the sought-after lens."
"For Impa. I did all of that to save Impa." He affirmed, staring awe-struck at the spectre.
"One of my children." Faint and thoughtful of tone, he drifted after the young one. "Farore chose well, gifting courage to one who is so loyal and so kind." Another step closer he came in the dark inexistence, and another Link backed away.
"Don't go on about courage, oh please don't." He begged of the spectre, "Because I'm scared of you. I was terrified in your Well and your Temple and I wanted so bad to run out and never come back."
"But you ventured through them anyway." The man pointed out reasonably. Link wasn't much for reason then. "And you chose not to run even when you so wished to."
Link gave a high, nervous laugh. "Yeah, yeah I did, and if I knew what it was like then I'd never have stepped foot in either of those hells. I wouldn't have done it."
"Yes you would have," The man insisted, floating after him as he backed away in the black ether, "I can say this with certainty because I have seen it. You've had that chance again and again."
"Only because of Sheik. Sheik, and Impa. Because I had reasons-"
"I pity the fool who disturbs the dead without reason."
"- But I couldn't have ever done it on my own."
"Who is to say that is a bad thing? What reason for yourself could you have to wake those sleeping?" The crow demanded, again sensibly, and made a dark point.
Link decided this subtopic had stagnated and that they should get back to the crux of the matter.
"If their lives are endangered, why can't you save them?" He asked, finding himself moving in a circle.
After him, the crow flitted unhindered.
"I cannot leave the otherworld." He confessed, eyes always catching Link's. "I am forever more locked away here to guard the souls passed."
"Why? Did the Sisters lock you here?"
Laughter shattered the calmness of ether.
"You think they have such power?"
Silence trailed after that, Link growing more and more alarmed.
The spirit seemed to catch his own mistake.
"… they are… kin," He began, softer, "and only hold a level of power as great as mine. Their influence lies with your world. They could not venture into my realm just as I could not venture into yours. But overlaps exist; in these places I can influence, and touch, and aid. That is why I could appear to you in the Well, and stop the temple dwellers -"
"That was you?"
"- from doing what they wished to do." He frowned, "What is it about me that makes you so nervous?"
"Everything." Link informed him with all frankness.
"Well, yes, but in particular."
Link thought about it, really thought, just because he was given a chance. "The fact that you're roughly equal in size to a Great fairy helps. And that you're a giant raven."
"That's not something I can particularly help." The man pointed out with a faint, thoughtful frown.
With a jolt Link realized he was right,
"But I can make myself smaller," He continued, and shrunk just to Link's stature.
Link almost wanted to apologize now, because hadn't he done that to Sheik too?
"I suppose it's to be expected. You're certainly not the first - mortals fear death, and that which frequents it."
…. Now he felt really bad.
"I have seen you, though. You do not judge him-"
"Yes I did."
"-but you righted yourself," The crow continued, "And tried to better yourself. You ventured into death's reach - my reach -" the amendment made soft with his voice"-over and over to retrieve things precious. You are the only one I would trust for this."
He stepped up and met Link's eyes square. "The one light is too bright. It strives to rip apart shadow. Alone Sheik will not prevail." Then he bowed, so deep and low that Link felt moved to sickness.
"You will help him, won't you?"
…. Gods, he hated himself.
"Yes."
Iblis had blessed him. He wondered about that, about whether it was blasphemous.
Before him Dampé floated, jaw slack, just staring. "Young man," He spoke when he was broken from being dumbstruck, "Do you know where you just went?"
"… Not where, but I know who I saw there…" He mumbled and stopped.
Something was hanging around his neck - his searching fingers caught on a chord and pulled out an amulet. There was a gem embedded in it, multifaceted and glowing with the vermillion of sunset and a Venetian red
that reminded, too eager, of half-dried blood.
Dampé stared down at it, horrified and awed. "Iblis has blessed you," He told Link, who stared stricken at the object he grasped.
Iblis, the gem whispered when he squeezed so hard his fingers hurt, I am your link to Iblis.
… I get it… he let go.
"Goddesses be with you, young man." Dampé blessed, "Let me bring you out of here."
"… Thanks…" he mumbled.
Just before sunset the light was brilliant gold. Washing over him, warm and sweet and alive, he tried to forget the scent of rotting. Under his gauntlet the triforce hummed - not unpleasant.
Sheik was standing there when he climbed back out of the tomb, and he remembered the crypt below the temple and green gook all over and a teenager offering kindness without asking for anything.
He stood leaning against the old shack, older now and maybe darker, and Link felt warm. Sheik's eyes caught first his face, then the red gem thumping with each step against his tunic - too-bright. He raised a brow, but did not question Link's sudden interest in -gaudy- jewelry.
"Um. Thanks for waiting for me…"
He waited then, for explanations or dismissals, but Sheik held his tongue. Dryness incarnate was his stare, ripping apart any notion of subtly, "I will wait for you anytime, Link."
More and more of late, he found there were feelings he'd rather not sort out. He added the warm fuzzy mass inside him that made his heart skip to the list.
The reserved, relieved twist of lips just visible beyond the cowl wasn't helping.
Link took up an old question and presented it to his friend.
"Hey, uh… somebody told me sheikah give alms to the birds. How come?"
Sheik paused and gave him a befuddled smile, soft and wonderful. "Link. Have you ever tried to dig a hole on a mountain?"
Curious, he denied any such attempts.
"Well then. Come tomorrow we shall give it a try."
They went back to town and settled into a house of no particular interest.
Smile nostalgic and let yourself be buried in the past.
An order imposed by his own thoughts, he was left little else to do.
Sheik said the place was little used in the last years, but no dust had settled. Link again got the sense that something was left out in the words spoken.
Gentle brushes of his fingers over old parchment-colored walls, the sound of crickets outside the window, everything felt sleepy and sweet.
For evening meal they ate simple roast meat and dull bread, drank water instead of wine, and at bedtime slept on blankets over hay. And Link loved it so much more than the castle. The cot from so long ago was too small for either of them - indeed, it was just the size for a child and backed Sheik's claim.
Half-overlooked memories of blond boys with disapproving stares and antiseptic in hand embedded themselves in the very world around them, but only Link could see.
Sheik's eyes that sought truth, of course, couldn't be privy to the illusion of past times fading, painted only by an aging mind.
In between the house's narrow walls, thoughts and dreams and the vague notion of youth fading were whispered in the receding light before they laid their heads down to sleep. Blowing out the light and settling alone on rough-hewn mats, less than a footstep between the edges, Link felt far, far happier than he ever could in the lonely splendor of anywhere else.
Seven hours past dark, happy flew out the window and died a lonely death.
At that fateful, horrid hour Link would curse everything from Sheik to spirits to the moon. For he was woken unclean and unfulfilled, having been unwillfully subjected to all the consequence of youthful condition.
As per his earlier prediction, he'd dreamt of that one night in the dark at the castle, and found that whilst the positions were the same, the servant wasn't present, and events didn't end at a faux-press of lips to his neck.
If only, he reflected, flushed and forlorn. If only.
He made his way out back to snatch up a bucket.
The sun was bright. Miss Anju was sweet and lovely and all things beautiful, for she had given them a lunch to take up the mountain.
Sheik had risen with a smile and no cowl- Link could have stroked out if all the blood hadn't rushed to his face - and had very calmly begun making up a list of what could be going on in the mountain (magic, natural evolution, natural selection), what extra supplies were necessary (times past taught that Link would need at least nine feet of bandages and antiseptic to match - he grabbed a bottle of hard liquor from the cabinet).
Soon after waking Sheik ventured outside to grab some fresh water to bottle. Link saw the wisdom in that and likewise checked what rations they'd been given.
In the process he found that at some point prior, Sheik had lined the bags with implements for cooking and hunting, presuming that the metal sticks were indeed spits and Sheikah hunted with daggers and a length of twine.
Whilst he pondered the possible but difficult prospect of ambushing prey with rope (and the more alarming idea of taking on a grown stag with naught but a half-foot blade), Sheik returned. And asked, in tones most perturbed, why Link's night clothes were drying in the sun.
Link turned three shades of color, starting with a blush Zelda may have found enviable and ending with one Volvagia most certainly would've. This not serving, he tried anew by stutters incomprehensible, and when failing again reverted to spirited gesture.
At the very least, Sheik seemed entertained by the show, enough that he deigned to ask no more.
Link was glad of it.
Outside that little, nondescript house, the sun smiled down on them. It was accompanied by beautiful sky, so intense and blue and free of blemish. It seemed no one in town could find fault with life today, and all were in good spirits. Miss Anju, noted before, was feeling generous. Even the head carpenter couldn't quite summon up the ill-spirit to be whole-heartedly disapproving of the world.
The man on the lookout was of particularly jubilant condition, waving and shouting avidly to the man on the roof beside him. A shadow appeared from the entrance of town, and he cried out the arrival of a hawk. A royal message, he said, with the King's seal. He peeled it open.
Almost regretful to leave such a light-hearted place, they paused at the gate to Death Mountain trail.
The man read the letter once, silent, then read it aloud.
Chapter end
AU: To my dear readers. Please don't sleep in trees. It is not a good idea, this is the voice of experience speaking. Roofs are also an ill-informed place to nap. Both are likely to win you a Darwin award and yes, dears, you have to die for those (or otherwise have your reproductive system rendered null and void in the fateful act.)
heeheehee.
Stalchildren keeps being corrected as stepchildren by spellcheck, whom also insists that conspiration is actually constipation. Pfft.
In past times, gay actually meant bright or merry, or to live a debauched and/or dissolute life. I'm just being a jackass with the double meanings (again.)
Red throw being red… carpet? (carpet is from the 1400s and I try to remove words like that when they have significance,… and then I found out just how limiting that is and how even the game doesn't conform to those standards. But I'll still aspire to the feel of period fantasy.)
History of the lute and the era of its appearance is debatable so… yeah. I like the sound of lutes, but originally it was going to be a sitar. Then I found out that sitars are from the east and likely wouldn't have made an appearance at all, let alone be recognizable to our heroes. So.
Finally, on Link's gaud. It is a very nice piece and the gem itself is astoundingly beautiful, but you'd never want to wear it. I think Reala (from NiGHTS, owing to his costume in JoD) would wear it, really. It's a faceted, oval-like polygon and its just huge (little smaller than Link's fist).
And as for the part where happy flies out the window - for those of you who aren't used to… I guess flowery metaphors (are mine flowery?) he had a wet dream and all the physical effects.
If you made it past the oc bit, thank you. He won't be important from now on, just think of him as that guy in the background. The unimportant one. Cool, cool. Did he seem too teeth-rottingly nice and un-noblish? I mean, if Zelda can be a noble…
AS FOR UPDATES -AGAIN- I'm SOOOOOORRRRY, I FORGOOOOOOOT. STUFF happened and them more STUFF and actually time is just strange for me. BUT I UPLOADED TWO IN ONE DAY BECAUSE I LOVE YOU ALL. I want to sleep but instead I show my love… ah… is this how it feels to be Russia, Ivan? (Hetalia)
Other excuse; I've been on textile making and drawing binges, so yeah. Thinking about uploading my images for the characters in this to my Deviantart – how do you all feel? Mm… night night.