Story Title: The History of Us
Disclaimer: Still do not own Twilight Princess.
Author's Notes: I'm not really sure what to say here this time. I can only offer that it was never my intention to set aside this story for so long. This fic was always supposed to be a fun story with only some drama, but somewhere around this chapter, I lost sight of the levity. I started overthinking the plot to the point where I could only see its faults. I've lost count on how many rewrites it has taken me to get to something I actually liked.
Oddly enough, it was the TP manga and its 'mishandling' of Shad that fueled my will to complete this chapter and kind of reinvigorated my hibernating love of ShadLink. Because what's better to fuel fanfics than one's irritation toward an adaptation that apparently decides to give your favorite character the middle finger...
As always, thanks for reading.
-o-
Chapter Four: In Shad's Company
-o-
Even as they headed up the stairwell together to his floor, Shad still could not believe that Link had wanted to see where he lived and study at his home rather than at his own. Shad had quietly laughed at Link, mistaking Link's honest request for a joke, but Link had been sincerely curious. It was unexpected, to say the least, but it was also pleasantly exciting, even if the prospect of having Link over left Shad feeling a nervous flutter throughout his chest.
Shad rarely had company over, which it was more accurate to say that he never had company over. His uncle Mako only came home for a week or two once or twice a year. Miss Telma was the exception, of course, but she was also his landlady so she was obligated to check in on him at least once a month for rent. Nonetheless, he appreciated her visits and chats immensely.
It was strange but ever since their study session the other day, Link was considerably less quarrelsome with him. Link still frowned and grumbled his protests underneath his breath whenever Shad brought up studying but he no longer ignored him. Actually, as long as Shad did not bring up studying, Link was rather civil toward him. It was certainly a step up from their previous interactions.
"Pardon my disbelief, but tell me again why you wanted to study at my place?" Shad asked as they approached his apartment and Shad fumbled through his backpack for his keys. They had stopped by Link's house earlier so Link was able to drop off his equipment and also wash and change and they easily could have just stayed and studied there but Link had persisted with his request until Shad had agreed.
"I don't know," Link said as he sat on top of the stone balcony and idly tapped his heels against it as he let the sun warm his back. "We studied at my place already so it just sounded fair." He punctuated his explanation with a shrug. Link appeared to be in a remarkably good mood today.
I suppose that is as good a reason as any, Shad thought as he located his keys and opened his door. Doubting that Link was inclined to do so on his own, Shad asked him to remove his shoes in the doorway. Link did so but Shad still had to set them in the rack by the door. History was at the forefront of his tutoring but Shad hoped to impart Link the habit of utilizing the shoe rack by the end of their arrangement. He had higher hopes that he was going to be at least successful at teaching him history.
While Link looked around his living room in awe at all of his parents' antiques and his father's retro-fitted creations, Shad hastened to the kitchen to put on a kettle for tea to settle his nerves and agitated stomach. It had been so long since he had company over that he had briefly forgotten what the proper etiquette for hosting a guest was. He snapped his fingers as he recalled that he needed to offer Link a drink. And snacks. Link was going to want snacks. If only Link had not chosen to come over on grocery day… he groaned to himself. Shad's kitchen was quite scarce of food, especially of the superfluous snacking variety Link was so fond of.
"I thought all your furniture was going to have grandma plastic on them. Glad I'm wrong," Link said jovially. "I've never seen so much old stuff before. No wonder you're good at history. You kinda live it."
Did he just offer me a compliment? Shad thought, blinking in mild surprise. "W-Well, I prefer the term 'antiquated' or 'retrospective' but yes, thank you," Shad said, shyly looking away as he held his hands behind his back. In the wake of Link's kind words, Shad almost forgot to offer him a drink.
Link crouched down in front of Shad's television set. "Even your tv looks like it's a hundred years old. How did you hook up a dvd player to it?" he said, gazing with amused curiosity at his television set retro-fitted in what now was fashionably called Hyrulean Steampunk. At the time that his father had built it, however, it had just been his father's artistic preference. If his father were still alive, his specialty antiques and oddities shop and his retro-fitting side business no doubt would have found their market. His father's knowledge and passions had always been before their time.
There was something about the sincere interest in Link's eyes that sent Shad's ears red hot. "It's a modern tv, old boy, but the wooden box frame and the front control panel and buttons were custom-built by my father. He enjoyed tinkering with old machines. We both do, actually."
"That's so weird and unnecessary," Link said and Shad winced behind him out of his view. "But kinda cool."
I say, I have never heard that word attributed to me in any positive regard, Shad thought as he blinked in astonishment. He was far more used to being called weird than cool. Truthfully, he had not expected Link's sentence to finish out on another compliment.
"You and your dad do this a lot together?" Link asked as he rose out of his crouch and stood.
"Actually, my parents are no longer with me," Shad said and Link looked back at him. There was surprise in Link's wide-eyed stare but there was also an unspoken apology and a realization that he had shoved his foot straight in his mouth. Shad waved a hand in an 'it's-fine' manner. "Truth be told, I'm still an apprentice compared to what father knew."
"Is it just you here all the time?" Link asked. He seemed to grasp quickly that what Shad meant was that his parents were no longer living rather than mistakenly thinking that Shad merely lived away from them. "Who takes care of the house and pays for everything?"
"I do," Shad replied. "My parents were well off enough that I'll be fine until I graduate university as long as I stick to a sensible budget. And my uncle saw to it that I was self-sufficient before he returned to his boat. All in all, I possess a regular home life as anyone else, except that I must be the one to do everything."
Shad knew that his living situation was highly unusual, even when compared among the students that really did live away from their parents, but he was determined to not feel as if his life was strange in comparison to his classmates. He knew that he was an odd person and his interests were peculiar and not fashionable among his peers but his home life was not strange. The fact that living alone was more typical for a twenty-something than a high school student was beside the point.
"You must go to the movies a lot," Link said. "That's what I'd do if I lived alone."
Of course you would, old boy, Shad thought. "I cannot recall the last motion picture I went to see," he said, tilting his head down and smiling softly. "I much prefer to splurge my allotted luxuries expense at the bookstore."
"Shad, you ever think you read too much?"
No matter how many times someone asked him that question, Shad still found it preposterous. "Sorry, old boy, but there is no such thing."
Link softly laughed while shaking his head in what Shad presumed to be amused disbelief. At the whistle of his kettle, Shad stepped back into the kitchen briefly and finished making himself a cup of tea. Link was sitting on his loveseat when Shad returned with their drinks and sat down beside him.
"Hey, listen…" Link said rather sheepishly, after thanking Shad for the milk. "I'm sorry if I opened my big mouth."
"Now, it's all right, old boy. You could not have known," Shad said, pausing to have a sip of his tea. He had to admit that he was feeling far less nervous. So far, Link's visit was going better than he had expected—not that Shad had expected things to go wrong so quickly but Shad almost always thought and prepared for the worst to occur. "While I do miss them terribly every day, there is no better way to honor their lives than to live on. They are still with me, in spirit and body. My very DNA is a part of each of them, after all."
"I wish I had thought of myself like that out before I turned into a stupid punk," Link said. "I hated being the foster kid."
"Pardon?" Shad said, stopping mid-raise of his teacup to his lips. Of all the many things said about Link throughout the halls and in the classrooms not once had the fact that Link was once a foster child ever surfaced through the rumor mill. However, Shad had heard how Link used to be quite the delinquent in middle school before he joined the baseball team and found the sport to be a natural fit for him.
"I was taken from my birth parents," Link said, as he rubbed the back of his neck. "I mean, Rusl and Uli, they adopted me. It's kinda obvious."
"It does make sense now, seeing how you possess Hylian ancestry, as do I," Shad said as he tapped the pointed tip of his slightly elongated ears.
While there was little distinction between Hylian and human today and both terms were used to refer to the populace, having Hylian ancestry always referred to being descendants of the chosen people said to be capable of hearing the gods' voices. Of course, the Hylians of the old tales were said to be capable of using magic so the authenticity of the old tales were taken with a grain of salt these days. Even so, Shad still hoped to one day see the City in the Sky told in the old stories, even if his classmates thought he was a complete birdbrain for thinking it actually existed.
"It's not a big a deal to me than it used to be. But no one rags on me about it anymore either. I remember being jealous of my friends at times and it always felt like everyone around me was pitying me. Bullies used to sling out the fact I had no parents like it made it all right to pick on me," Link said, his smile devoid of any real humor. "After a while, I got angry. Even after Rusl and Uli adopted me, it took me a long while to stop thinking I was alone, to think of them as my parents."
I never would have guessed... Shad thought. It was hard for Shad to imagine an angry and lonely Link when Link always seemed to have a carefree smile on his face and a crowd of friends and fans around him throughout the school day and long after the final bell. Hardly any of his fellow classmates ever had a bad thing to say about Link and he was not without quite a few heart-eyed female admirers who were unabashed in their exclaims that Link was so cool and handsome. The fact that Link was on the complete opposite side of the popularity spectrum than Shad was not lost on him. Still Shad had not expected to have any similar commonality to Link.
"I was devastated at first but my uncle saw me through my grief and loss," Shad said. He found it remarkable how frank Link was being with him. "When he first headed back out to sea, it felt like I had lost a parent again, but that time I had all the knowledge and skills to fend for myself. After a while, I eventually accepted that I was alone."
"That's really me—" Link started to say and then quickly said, "mature. You're a lot more mature than I am."
Shad had his suspicions that 'mature' wasn't the word that had first came to Link's mind. Still he felt his cheeks warm again at the compliment.
"So we gotta get started?" Link cheerfully said in an attempt to further smooth over his near slip of the tongue and to clear out the unfortunate, serious air that had settled in and around them.
"We could," Shad said, pleased to hear that Link was ready to begin their study session. This was the first time Shad did not have to fuss and squabble with him to get his books and mind ready, or deal with Link's attempts to distract him from his lecture, or bribe Link with snacks if he allotted him an hour of his undivided attention. "However, I was intending to go to the store today."
"Or we could do that!" Link said, quite enthusiastically. Like so many other times beforehand, the promise of food once again brought out the most cheer out of Link. The fact that that going to the store was also a further delay of their study session was not lost on Shad.
Shad hummed as he sighed. "Why do I get the feeling that taking you grocery shopping is not the wisest decision?"
-o-
As it turned out, taking Link grocery shopping was not the wisest decision but it was an interesting endeavor, to say the least. Really it would have been quite all right, except that Link had this discourteous and childish habit of placing things into Shad's cart with the expectation that Shad was going to purchase them now and that he was going to repay him in a few days when he had the money. Equally frustrating was that Link also had a terribly infuriating habit of putting away Shad's items because they were healthier choices and Link heartily enjoyed things Shad was only able to describe as bizarre approximations to food.
While Shad was not about to claim that his diet was not devoid of daily indulgences, he at least attempted to eat healthy and sensibly to counteract his sweet tooth. Link, however, eschewed nutritional content altogether in favor of things that tasted good to him. Among his list of snacks contained such dubious gems as cheese in a spray can, Goron-spiced jerked meat sticks, octorok-flavored chips, and mint chocolate cricket cookies. By the end of their little shopping adventure, Shad was convinced that there was a black hole embedded in Link's stomach. How Link managed to stay in peak physical condition was a wonder to Shad...
By some grace of the goddesses and plentiful compromise, Link had only added an extra thirty rupees to his grocery expense when it was all over with. It was unexpected, yes, but it was not going to decimate his budget like Shad had feared. Truth be told, having a few extra snacks around for Link was not a bad idea. Really, it was just polite manners for entertaining guests. And it was not like some of the not-dubious extras were things Shad was not going to eat himself, and he could put the extra milk and eggs to good use.
It was getting to be six o'clock in the evening and still Link and Shad had yet to begin their study session. Link had found it immensely satisfying when he discovered Shad's packed cabinet of sweets while they were putting away the groceries. Much as Shad tried to explain that there was a world of difference between his love of Cookie Keatons and Link's love of canned mystery meats and that there was an actual scientific explanation for his amassed quantities of sweets, Link did not believe either argument. Shad and Link wound up agreeing that Shad was no longer able to speak critically of Link's choice of snacks.
With the cooked chicken cut and the fettuccine done and draining, Shad focused on making the Alfredo sauce while Link went over a list of notable royals and their accomplishments. Shad was planning on going over the circumstances and events that initiated each of the three Great Hyrulean Civil Wars with Link after dinner but, in the meantime, it was beneficial that Link became well versed in and refreshed on Hyrule's unbreakable royal lineage.
Link groaned loudly behind him and muttered about something being impossible and that he was dead, dying, or something of the sort that Shad had failed to discern. "How do you keep track of who is who in what time when everyone has the same name?" Link complained in the same groaning voice as he tossed down the list onto the table. "Every princess is named or is renamed Zelda and I can only remember a handful that actually did something memorable."
"It was a very pervasive belief originating from the old tales that the first daughter of the royal family was a reincarnated mortal goddess, so nearly all daughters were named Zelda or were given the name later in life if she accomplished something worthy of the divine heritage," Shad explained as he added the Parmesan cheese to the heated cream and stirred. "To this day, the royal family continues the tradition and Zelda remains the most popular name for girls."
"Is that why Zelda is called 'the Princess of Castle Town'?" Link asked.
While Link was just one of the most popular boys at their school, Zelda was undeniably the most popular girl at their school. Top grades, class president, a star on the girls' volleyball team, Zelda was every much like the beautiful princesses described in the old tales. She even had an air of maturity and elegance that was very much indicative of a crown princess. Shad only had a few shared classes with her but she always seemed calm and above it all to him while many of their classmates claimed that just the grace of her presence was enough to brighten their day.
"I suppose so," Shad replied, "though I have heard that she does not care much for the nickname."
It did not go unnoticed by Shad that Link had stopped trying to study his list and instead watched him finish dinner. Shad was not accustomed to having so much attention and found his mesmerized, hungry stare distracting. As he briefly stepped away from the stove to gather their plates and cutlery, Shad noted how the heat he was feeling from standing in front of the stovetop presumably had not diminished one bit. He almost considered removing his bowtie in an effort to alleviate the heat.
"I've never seen anyone make their own pasta and sauce before," Link said, tilting his head up and taking in a deep breath of simmering Alfredo sauce. "How did you learn how to cook?"
"I had to, old boy. I learned through books and programs and practice," Shad said as he tossed and stirred in the pasta and chicken and then turned down the heat to let the pasta simmer for a spell. "Not only is it a basic survival skill but it's more cost effective."
"Oh, right, I guess you would've had to learn," Link said, offering a wincing smile as he realized his silly question. "Can't say I know much about making food. I'm one of those people that burns water."
"Oh dear… I would not be opposed to showing you a few fundamentals one day when we possess the additional time," Shad said as he removed the pan off the heat and started filling their plates with the finished chicken alfredo, divvying Link a larger portion than his. "Might there be something you can make well?"
"Well, I didn't want to brag but I do make a mean peanut butter spread between two chocolate chip cookies dunked in milk," Link said, raising his head high and sticking his chest out in an overt show of pride. Shad knew that Link was just kidding around but Link's answer had nonetheless left him dumbfounded, though not for the reason Link might have expected.
"Okay, I get it," Link said. "That was dumb."
"No, it's just that—" Shad felt the return of his flutter and quickly tossed his stare down onto their plates and kept it there as he admitted, "I do that too."
"It's so good, right?" Link said, his voice loud from excitement. "I didn't know anyone else did that but me." It was such an insignificant shared taste between them but Link was absolutely overjoyed to find someone that understood its appeal. In that moment, with Link's face lit up with cheer, Shad had the feeling that he had finally convinced Link that he was all right and that their arrangement was not going to be the painful, boring ordeal that Link had initially believed it was going to be.
Perhaps Link might even say hello to him in the halls when all this was over.
Moments later, Shad did not believe that his face was able to get any warmer or redder that it already was. But as Link dug into his dinner, found Shad's cooking to be more than gratifying, and heaped praise and engaging questions onto him, Shad found himself excusing himself from the table just to allow his face to return to a less noticeable shade of pink. It did not help that occasionally Link made noises as he ate that would sound indecent in any context.
However, Shad was pleased that Link was enjoying himself in his company.
