And this is where Rendition and TWP become almost completely different. XD From this point on, reading TWP gives you little to no clues about what's going to happen next. The settings are the same for the most part, but the situations are very, very different.
Chapter Seven; The Dying Day
I follow him as he leaves the bowl of the lake. It's hard to keep up with him like this, when he's on horseback and I'm hoofing it, at least without using the underground roads. I have to run, and as long as I'm running I don't have to think.
The fog inside my head is burning away, only there isn't anything behind it. Nothing I want to see, anyway.
He stops and sets up a little camp hours before the sun sets, which is unusual for him. He usually rides through the night, or at least pushes on until he hits a town. He's only ever done this once, when he got caught in a storm and had to wait it out or risk getting his head smooshed in by hail. That temple must have taken more out of him than I thought.
I find a good solid tree and make a little camp of my own. It keeps me occupied for a couple of minutes, and then there's nothing left to do but sit there and wait until the sun goes down.
That's the thing about running. Eventually, you have to stop, and then whatever you're running from catches up with you.
Being near him like this is, well... Terrible. If I were a hundred miles away, I would be helpless and out of any metaphorical danger. Here, I can see him, hear him, if I listen. I could just walk right up and talk to him, appear out of the night and start a wholly new conversation, one that hadn't been written by some crazy old man a thousand years before. It would be ours, and ours alone.
It would be easy, as easy as closing my eyes and falling asleep.
And why not, why not, why not...
There are a thousand and one reasons, but they all seem like excuses. He has to make the journey on his own, but that doesn't mean we can't have a friendly chat. He can't learn to depend on other people to help him, but I'm not trying to. I just want to talk. And there's nothing wrong with that, except that I'm not supposed to.
In the end, it all boils down to not supposed to. Not supposed to do this, not supposed to do that, and why? All these rules are meant to keep us apart, to keep us from getting attached, or at least to keep him from getting attached to me. The mask, the scripts, the appearing and disappearing, it's all there to keep him away from me. Artificial distance.
There's always been distance. All around me, a bubble of anonymity that everyone seems to have tried desperately to protect. They never bothered to give me a proper name, just kept on calling me child until that became a name in and of itself. I've never celebrated my own birthday, although I've suffered through every one of the Princess's. I've never owned anything. No-one's ever asked me about my favourite foods, my favourite color, my opinion. Every tale of a possible new friend, or even the slightest sign that I might want one, is met with suspicion and anger and a tirade of the thousand assorted reasons why I should never trust anyone, ever.
They cut me off from my own life, like putting on a tourniquet before cutting off a limb.
That's the thing about masks, I suppose. Eventually, you have to take them off and throw them away.
And maybe it's time, because now the only 'people' in his little camp are his horse and the little glowing pixie that follows him around everywhere, currently only visible as a glittery wing sticking out from under his pointy green hat. He's disappeared from right under my nose, and I didn't even notice.
So much for keeping an eye on him.
It can't be one of Ganondorf's minions; they aren't exactly subtle, and even if you don't see or hear them, you can smell them from a mile away. Any kind of natural predator would have spooked the horse. It could have been human bandits; there've been more and more of them around these days, as the more conventional and legal methods of making a living withered and died.
But why didn't I hear a fight? Was I really that out of it, or...?
"What are you doing?"
The voice is directly below me, and my lizard brain and seventeen years of hard-wired instincts don't really care that the tone is curiously conversational at worst. Sheikah don't startle easy, but when we do we do it hard.
If I were on the ground, I would have flipped backwards and been out of harm's way. Unfortunately, I am in a tree. My shoulder hits a branch and things get all topsy turvey and strange, and the next thing I know I'm flat on my back with the air knocked out of me and a rock digging into my spine.
And then, just as I'm finding my breath, he's here, leaning over me and putting his hand on my shoulder, and it's gone again.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you." It's the first time he's ever spoken to me, and his voice isn't quite what I expected; it isn't as deep, and it isn't as smooth, and there's an edge to it I never would have expected, even when he's trying to be soothing. "Are you alright?"
I'm not sure whether it's the decreased distance or the angle or the lighting or what, but looking at him is like falling out of the tree all over again. I knew his eyes were blue, but I never noticed the ring of yellow green around his pupils, or the little veins of silver in the brighter parts. His hair isn't all the same colour, either. The parts that are usually hidden under his hat are darker, heading towards brown, and there's a streak of silvery white near his temple, tucked behind his ear.
He has a thin, white scar along one cheek and a bruise almost healed on the corner of his jaw. His lips are dry and cracked.
He's never seemed so human to me, or so perfect.
"Sheik?" He cocks his head to the side and leans in a little closer, his eyebrows coming together. "Can you hear me?"
Right. I'm supposed to respond at some point, aren't I? I should probably start breathing again, then.
I start coughing, and he slips his arm around my shoulders and pushes me into sitting up, which doesn't help as much as he probably expected. He's kneeling next to me, pulling me up against his chest, rubbing my back through the mantle and the bandages and the suit. He pushes my hair out of my face, and his fingertips brush across my cheek. He's touching me all over, more than I've ever been touched in my entire life, and this isn't important to him, it doesn't matter, and doesn't he realize this is not helping?
He turns his head towards me, and when I feel his breath against my cheek, I realize my mask is down around my neck. He can see my face, all of it, and the heat of him is right there, so close. He's wrapped around me, and in me, closer than anyone's ever been.
There's no distance between us at all.
But my lungs are on fire, and my heart is about to jump out of my chest, and I can't think straight anymore, and I just need to be away, somewhere where I can breathe.
I shove him away and put a few stumbling feet between us. My heart starts to slow down, and the coughing stops.
If I close my eyes, I can still feel him against me.
I'm so stupid. It's not just that I let him sneak up on me, which is bad enough as it is, or that I fell out of the damn tree. I came too close, got careless, underestimated him. I wanted to be close to him so badly, and now I am, except it's all wrong.
"Sheik?" I can hear the gesture in the words the same as I can in Etin's; the hand reaching out, then falling back to his side; the way his eyes narrow and draw together.
"What?" My own voice is strange and hard and rough. "What do you want?"
"I- Nothing." He moves around behind me, deliberately clomping around as he comes nearer. "I saw you out here, and..."
He leaves the sentence hanging awkwardly in the air. There's all this empty space between us now, only it isn't empty. It's full to bursting with all the things we could say and do but aren't, and every moment that passes it gets a little fuller.
I have to get out of here. I need to just leave, pretend this never happened, that he never talked to me or touched me. We can just go back to the way things are supposed to be, as long as I leave right now.
I don't move.
His hand settles slowly onto my shoulder. It's warm, even through the leather of his glove.
"I wanted to see you."
I turn and look at him over my shoulder, and I know that expression on his face. It's the same one he gets when he's looking at a problem, and he knows exactly where he's going; he just needs to figure out how to get there.
I know this is wrong, or at least it's supposed to be. I might not trust Zelda, but I do trust Etin Impa, and I don't think she would do what she's done to me or tell me the things she has without good reason. There must be a purpose behind it all.
But I can't see it, and the longer I stand here with his hand on my shoulder and my heart jumping up through my throat, the less important that unknown purpose seems, and the more important it is that I not say 'no'.
Sooner or later, it doesn't matter what you're supposed to do. Supposed is just a word. What really matters is what you have to do, what you want to do, and what you can't.
Right now, what I can't do is turn around and tell this man that he isn't allowed to have a friend.
And if there's a little bit of selfishness in there, too... if maybe, just maybe, friends could be something more than friends...
Now that I know what he feels like, I can't deny that either.
