Sheik slept fitfully that night, dreaming of her mother. But whenever she tried to focus on an image or a snatch of sound, it faded out of her grasp. So she wasn't in the best mood at dawn the next morning, when Impa shook her awake.

'Go away,' she mumbled. 'I am closed for business owing to extreme tiredness. Come back tomorrow, or preferably not at all.'

'Ah, I see you've prepared your speech for Link,' Impa replied, wrenching open the curtains. She frowned when this got no response, and glared at Sheik, who had gone back to sleep. 'Didn't you hear me?' she asked, waking her up again. 'Link's back!' Sheik stared at her. Then, slowly, like the rising sun, joy dawned on her face.

'He's back!' she yelled, leaping out of bed. Unfortunately she landed on a rug, which skidded across the floor and out from under her. Impa winced as she crashed to the ground, but she was on her feet again in seconds. 'Where is he? Is he waiting for me? What did he say?'

'Nothing much. He's out in the garden, and he's got a look in his eye which makes me think he's planning something. Oh, and for some reason he's suggested you wear something other than a dress. I suggest your normal clothes.' Sheik didn't need to be told twice. She grabbed her bodysuit, managing to get it the right way round on her third attempt, and raced out the door. 'Aren't you worried about what he's up to?' Impa yelled, chasing her down the corridor.

'No! Link wants to see me, and for once in my life I don't have to wear a dress! Could this day get any better?' She tried to halt by the door to the garden, skidded along the floor, and ended up in a heap at the far end of the corridor. But she wouldn't let anything dampen her enthusiasm, and she raced down the steps to see Link. 'You're back!' she yelled, throwing her arms around him and almost knocking him over.

'Er, yeah…' Link replied, slightly confused by the display of affection. Sheik thought back to the last time she'd seen him. Ah yes, she'd run off at sunset with no explanation. Oops. But the way she saw it, why dwell on the past? She had hours to spend with Link today. 'You didn't tell me you were going away,' she said, slightly hurt. 'I missed you.'

'I'm sorry about that. I tried to tell you after all that trouble with Zant, but you left very quickly.' There was a note of accusation in his voice too, so Sheik decided to change the subject.

'You were very cryptic to Impa earlier. Apparently you're planning something?'

'Sort of. After you told everyone that Zant was plotting to kill you, I started to worry about you. I want to make sure you know how to defend yourself. So, since I know you can fence, I thought we'd have a friendly duel. Just to set my mind at ease.' He motioned to a guard, who came forward bearing an array of weapons. 'You get to choose your weapon,' Link told her, drawing his own sword.

Sheik blinked at him a few times, trying to keep up. Link wanted to fight her. Okay, so far, so good. She knew how to fight, thanks to Impa. But fencing? That sounded much more ornamental than what she'd been taught. Of course, it also sounded like the kind of thing Zelda would do. Now, how might one go about fencing? She eyed the weapons on display, and saw a straight, thin sword, which looked as though it would snap in two if you so much as sneezed on it. Yes, that seemed like the kind of sword Zelda would use. She reached for it, then stopped.

Next to it was a larger, curved sword. A Sheikah sword. Now that she knew how to fight with. So what should she do? Fake an ability to fence with that toothpick and lose terribly, risking Link's suspicion and more importantly his scorn? Or use the weapon she knew how to use, a weapon she knew she could hold her own with, and give this fight her best shot? Who knew, she might even manage to beat Link. After all, she could generally beat Impa, and surely some prince wasn't going to be a better swordsman than a trained Sheikah warrior? She grinned, and picked up the Sheikah sword. Link looked surprised, but nodded.

'Are you sure you want to do this?' he asked. Sheik's grin broadened.

'Are you?'

She leapt at Link, thanking the Goddesses that she wasn't wearing a dress. But Link was quicker than she had expected, moving easily out of the way and blocking her blow. He half-heartedly counterattacked, but Sheik parried with full force, almost knocking Link's sword from his hand.

'You're going to have to do better than that,' she said with a smile.

'I can see that,' Link replied, spinning and bringing his sword around in a whirling arc. Sheik just managed to dive out of the way, and narrowed her eyes. Alright, Link was better than she had given him credit for. Better than her, maybe. Clearly she wasn't going to win this fight the old-fashioned way. So what else did she know? She glanced around, and grinned. The well-kept garden wasn't quite the woodland she had been practicing in with Impa, but it would do. She backed away towards the trees, keeping an eye on Link. He ran after her, but just before he reached her she sidestepped neatly, exposing a large tree root. Link tripped, as she had planned, but he managed to turn it into a roll which left him standing on his feet, sword in hand. Sheik stood and stared, open-mouthed.

'I'm sorry, were you expecting me to be bad at this?' Link asked with a grin.

'Well… yeah, kind of! You're royalty! They're not supposed to be good at this stuff!'

'Says the Princess,' Link replied, slashing at her. Sheik backed away, blocking his attacks as best she could, but she couldn't find an opening to attack him back. 'Besides,' Link said, feinting to the left before attacking on the right, 'you didn't really think I was going to challenge you unless I was reasonably sure I'd win, did you?'

'That's cheating!' Sheik said, just stopping herself from growling. 'I thought you wanted to make sure I could defend myself, or some crap like that!'

'Language!' Link said with a laugh, still attacking. 'And anyway, I knew the moment you attacked me that you could defend yourself. Now I want to see how good a fighter you really are.' He ducked behind a tree, but when Sheik ran around behind it, Link was nowhere to be found.

'Brilliant,' she muttered. She turned around, looking for Link, but he was wearing green, and a green person was unsurprisingly difficult to spot in a garden. Suddenly she heard something creak and didn't even bother to look up, diving to one side as Link leapt down from the tree. 'You could have killed me!' she said, aghast.

'But I didn't,' Link replied, as if that somehow made everything okay. Sheik backed away, grinding her teeth. Okay, he's good. And he's smart, too. But smarter than me? Please. So how am I going to do this…? She backed away further, so that they were standing in the middle of a copse. She glanced around. No, they couldn't be seen from the rest of the garden. Perfect. She looked at Link, then theatrically threw down her sword.

'What are you doing?' Link asked with a frown, although to his credit he kept his sword raised. He wasn't going to be fooled that easily. Sheik said nothing, striding over to him and putting her arms around his neck.

'We're finally alone!' she said, looking deep into his eyes. 'I thought we'd never get rid of Impa and the others.' Realisation slowly dawned on Link's face, and he lowered his sword slightly, although he still kept it dangerously near her neck. Damn.

'Ah,' he said, smiling. 'So you think you're going to trick me into letting my guard down? Sorry Zelda, but that's not going to work.'

'Not even as a distraction?' she asked sweetly, reaching down and grabbing his hand. Before Link could react she twisted it hard, enough to make him drop his sword but not quite enough to hurt him. She was still in love with him, after all. He stared at her in shock, not trying to stop her when she kicked his sword away. 'Shall we call it a draw?' she asked with a grin, but it faded slightly when he said nothing. Why is he looking at me like that? Is it something I said? Damn, was it that trick? Of course it was. How would a Princess ever learn a trick like that? 'As you can see, Impa's been teaching me a thing or two,' she said with a nervous laugh, hoping to hurry Link's suspicions to an early grave. To her relief, after a few more moments Link's face smoothed into a smile.

'I think a draw sounds good. I can see that I'm going to have to get up earlier than that to beat you.' Sheik snorted.

'Link, you would have to stay up all night.' And that didn't work out so well for Zant, she thought with a grin. 'Now let's go. I'm sure by now Impa thinks I've married you or something.'

'Yes, and while we're on that subject,' Link said, and Sheik's heart stopped. 'Both our Councils want to set a date. I don't object. The only person stopping this is you.' Sheik's mouth opened and shut a few times like a fish.

'U-um,' she replied eventually, floundering. In fact, she might even have upgraded her dictionary definition of "flummoxed" to include: the feeling one gets when the man one is hopelessly in love with (but with whom one is absolutely not allowed to be in love) asks one to set a date for their wedding, and one would like nothing more than to marry him there and then, but one knows one will be flayed alive by Impa if one does that, so one's response is a feeling of flummoxedness. Assuming "flummoxedness" was a word, which she was reasonably sure it wasn't.

'Why don't we talk to Impa about that,' she said at last, going with the time-honoured knowledge that a problem shared is somebody else's problem. Link sighed, looking disappointed.

'I was really hoping you'd be slightly happier about the marriage,' he said as Sheik led him determinedly back towards Impa and the others. 'I mean, you've been so much nicer to me recently. For a while there I actually thought you loved me.' Sheik stopped dead, her eyes wide. How does he expect me to respond to that? I love him, of course I do, but Zelda doesn't! And he thinks I'm Zelda!

'It's complicated,' she replied at last with considerable honesty, towing him even more firmly towards the sanctuary that was Impa.

'I guess I was wrong then,' Link replied, sounding so downhearted that it took all of Sheik's willpower to stop herself from turning around and slapping him across the face a few times just to see if she could get some sense into him. He had no right to make her feel so guilty, no right at all! She knew her behaviour was confusing him, when he didn't know what was going on, but didn't he see that if there was any way in Hyrule she could have explained it to him, she would have? The cheek of that man, thinking that he was the only one having a hard time with this! Honestly, if she wasn't so in love she would have left him there and then. Luckily for him, she still thought that he was the most perfect creation the Goddesses had ever made, guilt-tripping and all.

'There you are!' Who won?' Impa asked.

'It was a draw,' Sheik told her when it became clear that Link was either still depressed, or more likely sulking, and either way he wasn't going to talk. Impa raised an eyebrow, which spoke loud and clear to Sheik. It said: we will be having Words about this later. Sheik sighed. Well, we might as well get this over with, since it doesn't look as though Link is going to be in the mood to spend time with me today.

'Shall we go?' she asked, and Impa didn't need to be asked twice, grabbing Sheik's arm and setting off back into the castle. As she was dragged away, Sheik looked back at Link. He was watching her, and held her gaze for a moment. But then he looked away, and even though Sheik watched him until he was out of sight, he didn't look back at her again.

'What was that?' Impa asked before the door had even swung shut.

'What was what? I drew! Aren't you proud of me?'

'No! As your teacher, I'm annoyed you didn't win, and as your babysitter, I'm annoyed you didn't lose!'

'But I couldn't win, because he was actually better than I was expecting, and I couldn't lose because why in Din's name would I want to do that?' Impa sighed, sensing this was going to take a while.

'You should have lost,' she said, speaking slowly, 'because now he's going to wonder why the Princess of Hyrule is so good with a Sheikah weapon.'

'So? I can just say you taught me, and that's why I chose the Sheikah weapon. And as for being good with it, well, why shouldn't I be? He's royalty too, and he sure knows how to fight!'

'Yes, but there's a difference. He has been trained with the sword from a young age because he's a prince, and one day he'll be a king, and princes and kings have to lead armies into battle. He needs to know how to fight. Zelda, on the other hand, is a princess. Princesses don't lead armies into battle, they have staff for that. If there ever was a war, Zelda would be sitting safe in the castle doing needlework while someone else did the fighting.'

'That sounds incredibly boring,' Sheik commented.

'Yes, but it's also how things are done! And that means that yes, Zelda was taught to use a sword, but only because that's a part of the traditional Princess curriculum! She's not supposed to be able to hold her own in an actual fight!'

'Well I'm sorry, but in case you hadn't noticed, I'm not a princess!' Sheik said angrily. She had been busily congratulating herself for holding her own against Link, and was looking for a few compliments. She was not in the mood for a lecture. 'I'm a criminal, and if I went around purposefully losing fights I would not have made it to the grand old age of seventeen!' Impa sighed, running a hand through her short blonde hair.

'Fine. There's an easy solution to this. I just won't give you any more lessons.'

'No!' Sheik yelled, and stopped. She didn't know where that shout had come from, but the thought of not learning to fight anymore was something that for some reason she felt strongly about.

'If you're just going to misuse what I teach you, I'm not giving you lessons,' Impa said with a shrug.

'Link's not going to fight me again! I won't have an opportunity to misuse your teachings again, and even if I did I promise I'll try really hard to lose the fight! Please, don't stop teaching me!' Impa frowned.

'Since when does this mean so much to you?'

'Since… since this is my one and only chance to learn something about what it means to be a Sheikah. I don't have anyone else to teach me.' Impa sighed and sat down, motioning for Sheik to do the same, which she reluctantly did.

'Sheik, what happened to your mother?' Impa asked quietly. Sheik was too shocked to respond, but she supposed that she shouldn't really be. It was an obvious question to ask. She just didn't want to answer it.

'Mommy? Where are you going?' the small blonde girl asks, rubbing her eyes drowsily. The tall woman turns around, surprised that her daughter woke up when she had been specifically trying to be quiet.

'I need to go away for a while, to deal with some monsters,' she tells the little girl, trying to smile.

'Why?' Sheik asks, with an expression of wide-eyed innocence.

'Because I do. There are some monsters around, and they're making the roads very dangerous for travellers. So I have to go deal with them.'

'But why you, Mommy?' Sheik asks, still looking confused.

'Because I'm a Sheikah. And what do Sheikah have to do?'

'Serve the Royal Family,' Sheik says dutifully, the well-practiced answer trotting off her tongue.

'Good girl. But serving the Royal Family doesn't just mean being a guard at the castle, like some Sheikah are. It also means serving the kingdom. That's what I do. That's why I have to go off and deal with monsters sometimes. This is just like all those other times.'

'But all those other times you say goodbye,' Sheik says, looking hurt. 'You never leave without saying goodbye.'

'I know, Sheik. But I didn't want to wake you. That's- that's the only reason.' She tries unsuccessfully to keep her voice from cracking, but she can't help it. She's heard rumours about these monsters, and she knows that they are stronger than anything else she has faced before. She has tried to keep the danger a secret from her daughter, to stop her from worrying, but she knows it's futile. Even if Sheik doesn't know what's wrong, she knows her mother well enough to know that something is different this time.

'What if you don't come back?' the little girl asks. Her mother starts to reply, then thinks better of it. She comes over and kneels down in front of her daughter, cupping the little girl's face in her hands.

'Sheik, I need you to be strong for me,' she says, her red eyes shining with barely-held back tears.

'Don't want to,' Sheik says sullenly, refusing to meet her mother's eyes.

'You have to. You can do that for me, can't you?' Her daughter looks up, but says nothing. 'I know you can do that. After all, you're a Sheikah. You're my brave Sheikah warrior, and no matter what happens to me, that's not going to change. You have generations of Sheikah blood in you, and I want you to remember that. Even if I don't come back. You are strong enough to fight for yourself.'

'But I want you to stay, Mommy! I don't want you to leave me! I can't do this by myself!'

'You can, Sheik,' her mother says, and she fails to stop a single tear from trailing down her face. 'I need you to be strong. Please? Promise me you'll do that?' Sheik hugs her mother tightly, burying her face in her shoulder.

'Why do you have to go?' she asks, her voice muffled.

'Because it's my duty.'

'Why, because you're a Sheikah? That's not fair!'

'No, not just because I'm a Sheikah. Look at me,' she says, turning her daughter's head to face hers. She says a few words to her daughter, words which it has taken her years to work out for herself. She hopes that, by passing on this advice now, she will save her daughter from wasting her life doing the wrong thing. She had hoped to wait until Sheik was older before telling her this, but it seems as though she won't get the chance anymore.

'Do you understand that?' she asks, and Sheik nods. 'So you understand that I have to do this.'

'Yes,' Sheik says, wiping her eyes. She doesn't want her mother to go, but she understands now. 'I'll try to be strong, Mommy.'

'Good girl. I know you can do this. Remember, I wouldn't be leaving you unless I knew, absolutely knew, that you could take care of yourself. I love you, Sheik.'

'I love you too, Mommy,' Sheik says, sniffing. Her mother smiles at her one last time, then leaves quickly before she changes her mind. Sheik runs over to the window, dragging a chair in front of it so that she's tall enough to watch her mother through it as she slowly walks off into the distance.

'That's the last time I saw her,' Sheik finished. Impa was silent, staring at the floor. 'Could you say something? Anything?' Sheik asked her. 'It's kind of worrying me that you're not saying anything.'

'I… I'm sorry,' Impa said at last. 'I didn't know.'

'Well, what did you think happened? You knew I had a mother once, but I don't anymore. What else were you expecting?'

'I know, I just didn't realise… that she died because she was doing her duty.'

'Yeah,' Sheik said, joining Impa in examining the carpet. 'I know it's what she wanted and all, but…'

'What did she say to you that made you understand?' Impa asked. Sheik shook her head. She had deliberately left out that part of the story, and she didn't want to have to tell Impa now.

'Just something about doing her duty. But… what my mother said, and did, that's why I don't like the Royal Family. And that's why I don't feel the need to spend my life serving them, alright? I know you think I'm disloyal to Zelda, and I'm trying to mess this up and get exposed out of spite or whatever, but I have a genuine reason for disliking her.'

'I know that,' Impa told her. 'And for the record, I never thought you messed up out of spite. To be honest, I mostly thought you messed up out of stupidity.' Sheik opened her mouth, tried to think of a way to refute this, gave up, closed her mouth again, and settled for grumbling under her breath.

'But even though I don't care much for the so-called "Sheikah's duty", I do care about being a Sheikah,' she continued instead. 'And I want to learn more about what that means, if only so that I can decide that it's not for me. My mother never had time to teach me all this stuff, like the Deku Nut trick or how to use a sword or the rest of it. And I know you and I don't see eye to eye much, but we're both Sheikah, and you can't deny that. And you're my only link to my heritage, and you can't deny that, either. So please don't stop teaching me. I'll try to lose on purpose if I ever have to fight again. But it's important to me that I learn this stuff. Please?' Impa nodded.

'I will keep teaching you. But Sheik,' she said, getting up to leave. 'What?'

'Your mother was telling you the truth. She wouldn't have left you unless she was sure you could take care of yourself. And I know that there have been times, when you were stealing, when you didn't have food or when you had to fight your way home, alone, in the middle of a storm, those were times when you doubted her. You didn't think you could take care of yourself, you wished she was still there to take care of you. Well, there's nothing wrong with wishing you still had your mother. But there is something wrong with doubting yourself. You can absolutely take care of yourself, even without your mother. After all, even though there have been tough times, you've made it this far all on your own. And if that's not proof that you are strong enough to fight for yourself, I don't know what is.'