fleets: …

Chapter 21: Courage

Don't get so attached to people, princess.

A person such as yourself will have to make difficult decisions. Sometimes what you want and what you need to do will not align. An unbiased ruler, then, must maintain a certain distance from others.

Remember the pain when you lost your parents. Did your feelings help you when you shut yourself in your room in grief? The world does not care for your troubles. You must continue on.

Do not think of them as people. They are numbers to move on a spreadsheet, nothing more. Losses are nothing when you think of the net gains.

Friends?

Friends do not exist in our world, Princess Hilda.

…

To my dearest friends.

I do not think you know how much being able to write those words mean to me. For years I have lived with the lie that one such as myself cannot have anyone to call friends. I was young, impressionable, and around the time the Seeker by the name Agunima arrived at the castle, I was but a broken child seeking someone, anyone, to fill the void of my recently deceased parents.

Insecure about my own abilities to oversee a kingdom I was not ready to rule, I ignored my own intuitions in favor of the opinions of someone who held nothing but resentment for the world I loved. Their confidence and poise, and their accumulated life experience allowed me to trust them. I saw nothing wrong with their logic, and I believed their promises to protect me from feeling the same pain I felt when I lost the ones closest to me. I isolated myself from others, and thus was able to rule with methodological efficiency. Decisions boiled down to gains and losses. Numbers were always logical. Stripped away of illogical empathy, numbers always showed what was right and what was wrong.

How could I have known that this advice came from a man who'd long since lost the ability to feel compassion, a bitter husk of a creature who no longer knew what it meant to be human?

I met the two of you about a year ago, falling over yourselves as you tried to run from the guards who were trying to catch you. You were loud, obnoxious, and behaving inappropriately in the castle grounds of the Princess herself. To be honest, that was probably the first time I'd laughed in a while, when Ravio stubbed his toe on a crack and accidentally fell into my arms. The rabbit outfit was the most ridiculous thing I'd seen in months, and Shadow's reaction to seeing me (and I hadn't known at the time that another friend of theirs looked exactly like me) had been priceless.

At first, I was going to agree to charge you a fine for trespassing, as well as punish you for causing a scene and giving my guards trouble. However, laughing at your loud introductions stirred something in me. You carried a light that the entire kingdom had forgotten after years of my rule.

You said there was a monster, a Nightmare, that threatened my kingdom. You said I needed a hero. The two of you were going to be my heroes.

I remember how the two of you joked about it, still not realizing I'd been considering throwing you into the jail for a few days. Or, maybe you knew, but you didn't care because that's just how the two of you are.

You left. I didn't think much of it, though from time to time I thought about the two troublemakers who'd come crashing into my castle. Then you came back. You were heroes. My heroes, in more ways than one.

You challenged everything I'd been made to believe after years and years of self-imposed isolation. We butted heads more than once when we didn't see eye to eye about how I ran my kingdom. In the beginning I was annoyed by you both: what could you possibly know about ruling a kingdom, and what nerve you had to keep coming back to the castle to argue with me?

I ended up giving you the key to the spare barracks so you could live on the castle grounds. I'd told myself it was to stop you from distracting the guards posted at the front gates, since they never seemed to be able to stop you from visiting me unannounced anyway.

It turns out you did know something about ruling a kingdom. Or, you knew those who had such knowledge. At first, your stories were difficult for me to believe. Apparently there was a princess just like me, living a world over, and she was one of your best friends. People loved her. She ruled with compassion, and though she sometimes hurt herself from caring too much about her people, it…

It made her a better ruler because of it.

I wanted to know more about her. She did everything I was taught not to do, and yet somehow, listening to your tales, she sounded happier than I was. She had goofy friends like you.

And it turns out that at one point, the two of you and her had been enemies, but somehow you ended up friends. You said she'd given the two of you a chance, even when you'd never expected her to and she had no reason to trust you. Apparently she'd even made friends with a horrible, evil sorcerer who'd nearly ruined her kingdom. You described him as grouchy but fun to tease. Fierce, but fiercely loyal. The way you talked about them both was so endearing, I almost felt like I'd known them for years myself.

Had I been in her position, I would have had the sorcerer executed without a second thought. I would have missed out on his friendship…

You told me stories about them. I don't know when it happened, but at some point I was looking forward to your visits and stories daily. I wanted to know more about you. I wanted to know more about them. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I actually felt like life had a purpose. I didn't even know I'd been so lost until I realized what I had been missing for all of these years.

I want to catch up on all the years of friendship I'd missed. I want to make up all the time I'd wasted, pushing people away. I want to bring back the light I'd stolen and return it to my people in the way you'd brought it back for me. I want to be friends with Zelda, Vaati, and dozens of others who I haven't met yet.

I was never fond of wishes, as at their core they're usually selfish things that often lead to disappointment.

However, just this once, if I could indulge myself with a wish…

I wish for adventures, the five of us camping on the peaks of Death Mountain. We are the first to see the sunrise, standing at the peak of the world.

I wish for lazy afternoons, lying in the fields beyond the castle as we find shapes in the clouds.

I wish for idle conversations on the rooftops of the town, making up stories for the people who pass below us.

If I could have one wish, and have it come true,

I want to take the time that I have left, and spend it all with you.

…

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"…eik… t…p."

Sheik groaned, slowly trying to open his eyes and then shutting them again when a piercing headache shot through his skull. The ground shook and rumbled beneath him, but his hearing was muffled. He brought a hand up to his splitting headache, and then felt cracked stone and dirt roll off of his arm.

Huh?

He stared at his dirt-covered arm for a few seconds, dazed, and he tried to remember what had happened. They'd gone down the tunnel to move the bombchu. They'd met Agunima.

The explosion.

"Sheik… Get up."

His hearing was slowly coming back, though everything was still a little muffled, and there was a ringing buzz in the background that he couldn't shake as the world gradually became filled with sound. If it hadn't been for that light that had pulled him away, he didn't doubt that he would have completely lost his hearing. Well, his life, too.

"We have… to get out of here."

He felt someone pull at his arm. Vaati. Cuts and scrapes ran along his face, and pieces of his clothes were torn from being sliced with jagged rocks that had hit him from the blast. He was hunched over a little: he'd done something to his hip. Some exposed parts of his face looked mildly burned, and Sheik realized that places where his own skin was exposed felt a little hot.

Sheik tried to stand up but was forced back down when there was resistance from his right foot, and pain registered from the movement. His leg had gotten crushed beneath debris. "Damn it," he heard Vaati hiss between his teeth, and the two of them worked to free his leg from beneath the chunks of rock and hard soil that had been blown up into the air from the bombchu.

He tried to stand up once he was able to free himself from beneath the rubble, but a sharp pain shot through his foot once again. Luckily, it didn't appear broken, but it had been sprained quite badly.

"Here, I got you." Vaati helped support his weight while Sheik looked around at their surroundings in a shocked stupor. There was a wide radius of destruction, with large pieces of rock and wall, dirt and splintered trees scattered every which way. The ground had been completely leveled, and further beyond there was what remained of the fortress: only about a quarter of it had survived the blast, though "survive" could only be used loosely here. Most of the foundation was gone, and broken pieces of walls jutted out from the ground here and there. Broken roofs burned where they'd fallen. Through the lifting dust of the blast, Sheik could see a few surviving Seekers running about in a panic in the distance, though Agunima himself was nowhere in sight.

"The others…?" Sheik asked hoarsely, while Vaati rummaged about his person to look for any bottles of red potion. The sorcerer swore to himself when he produced some broken glass between his fingers. The potions hadn't made it.

"Vaati, what happened to the others?" Sheik repeated.

There was a small intake of breath and Vaati froze. He lifted his head slightly, about to look at Sheik to respond, but turned away when he was unable to look him in the eye. Instead, the sorcerer pulled him gently forward from where he supported his weight, and the two of them slowly began to limp away from the destruction. After a while, Vaati answered, though by that time Sheik already knew what he was going to say.

"The ability I used, it's called light walking. Only Light Worlders can use it," Vaati explained. His breath caught in his throat. His voice was hollow. "I couldn't save them."

Vaati was speaking, but Sheik couldn't understand what he was saying. Images flashed in his head, of Shadow and Ravio reaching towards him. Tenzi's resigned smile. We can't leave them behind.

Another tug on his arm. He'd stopped walking, and Vaati was urging him forward, though the sorcerer himself didn't seem to have much energy left. "I got us as far away as I could take us. We have to go before he finds us."

"… We can't."

Vaati looked at the Sheikah, his forehead knitted together questioningly when Sheik pulled back.

"We can't just run away," Sheik insisted.

At this, Vaati's expression softened, and he turned away with a sigh. "I know," he said quietly.

"We have to go back…"

"But for what?"

"For the others."

Vaati slid away from under Sheik's arms that he'd been supporting, and moved to stand in front of him. With great effort, he placed his hands firmly on the other's shoulders again. "They're gone, Sheik," he said, forcing his words not to crack. It pained him to see Sheik hanging on to denial, his face ashen and his eyes unfocused. Vaati bit his cracked lips. "They're dead." In his effort to hide the tremor in his voice, he ended up sounding angry.

There was a sudden flash behind them, and the two whirled around. Atop the rubble in the middle of the worst of the damage, stood a cloaked figure. Agunima. Of course he'd survived. However, both Vaati and Sheik's attention were turned towards the body that swayed in the man's grip. It hung limp like a rag as the Agunima held it out in front of him by their wrist. Something was glowing faintly on the lifeless body's hand.

"Tenzi?" Sheik stumbled back in the direction they'd come from, towards Agunima. "That's Tenzi!" He coughed up dust that he'd inhaled from his sudden breath. They were far away from the cloaked figure and their victim, but Sheik just had a feeling… it had to be Tenzi. He dragged himself towards the two figures, but a sharp tug on his arm stopped him.

"We can't go back, Sheik!" Vaati hissed.

"But-"

The sorcerer gritted his teeth, keeping his grip around Sheik's wrist tight. "He's dead." He cupped the Sheikah's face in his hands, forcing him to look away from what was happening behind them and back towards him. He hated how the words tasted on his tongue, and he hated the rust of blood as it trickled on the corner of his parched lips. "There's nothing we can do to save them, they're already gone!" Then, he added quietly, "I'm not losing you, too."

That seemed to snap Sheik out of his daze, and his eyes finally regained some of their focus. Slowly, he brought his hands up hesitantly to Vaati's slightly shaking fingers.

Then, the Sheikah nodded once with resolve, and pushed the hands away from his face.

They had to go.

Behind them, the light from Tenzi's Triforce gleamed in the air as Agunima took it for himself with the power of the Fused Shadow. Neither Vaati nor Sheik stood to watch the entirety of the grim scene, and instead continued their slow retreat. They had no idea where to go, or what they could do now, but for now they had to get away.

They dragged their feet across the overturned earth, steadily making their way towards a nearby hill. If they could make it to the trees, they could find a place to hide and rest while they came up with a plan on what to do next. The two kept their gaze towards the trees with an almost desperate determination: it was the only thing they could hold onto, to distract themselves from the truth of their painful loss.

Don't think about the others.

Don't think about what's next.

Don't think about whether any of this had any meaning.

Only look at the trees. Only think about walking. Left foot over the right. Right foot over the left…

Without warning, another violent explosion shook the ground. The shockwave from the blast whipped past them, causing them to lose their balance. When Sheik turned around to see what had happened, a sinking feeling gripped his chest. Beside him, Vaati was still sitting on the ground where he'd been pushed over by the blast, but he was making no effort to get up, shocked as he was by what he was seeing.

"Din, Nayru, and Farore…" the sorcerer murmured.

Agunima and Tenzi were gone. The remnants of the fortress were gone. Instead, there was a colossal creature floating in the sky. It continued to ascend, flying, swirling higher and higher.

A serpent blackened the sky with its titanic size. Its maw alone was large enough to swallow a castle whole. It had a long, hog-like snout, and a long red mane billowed from its back like the fire of Din herself. It screamed an earsplitting bellow that rang out from between its four towering tusks that protruded from its jaws, and then it swung its head around to take a look at the world for the first time with its new eyes.

And it had eyes. It was covered in eyes.

A line of eyes that ran along the side of its face, down its neck, down its three pairs of arms that, while monstrous, still looked somewhat humanoid.

They were the eyes of Nightmare, but without the sadistic curiosity that the original one had had. The ones before, though twisted, still had the light of a soul. These ones were empty. Hungry.

Sheik watched in horror as one of the monster's many hands summoned a trident taller than any tower, and then another pair of hands summoned a nightmarish bow adorned with demon wings. Blue runes similar to the one that had been carved into the Fused Shadow flashed across its body briefly. "Vaati, do you think Dethl…"

Vaati shook his head. "No. I don't know what that is. I don't even know if that thing knows what it is."

Sheik watched the monster circle the air slowly and without purpose, a bow in one hand, a trident in the other, three other pairs of arms clawing at the air with confused twitches. All the while, the snake watched the world with the Nightmare's blank eyes.

He remembered Shadow and Ravio telling him about a man they had met while they'd been hunting for Dethl. If only they had stopped Agunima from using the Fused Shadow on the Nightmare creature back then…

"It's a monster with all the power of Dethl, the Triforce of Wisdom, the Triforce of Power, the Fused Shadow, the Interloper's vengeance, and my Wrath," Vaati continued, watching the scene with both revulsion and awe. "It's a collective consciousness of destruction."

The serpent twisted its head around, suddenly focusing on the ground below it. It gave a ground-shaking wail, and the world changed around them before their eyes. The sky darkened with the rush of a cold wind, and thick clouds rolled across the horizon. Plants instantly wilted in an increasingly widening circle from beneath the serpent until the landscape was a sea of grey. Wildlife was replaced with eerie monsters and walking corpses.

A flash. The serpent's maw flashed a brilliant light and the ground erupted with a series of explosions as it swung its head.

It swung its head towards them.

"Hang on," Vaati said, and he quickly reached over and grabbed Sheik by the waist. Vaati vanished into light just as the explosion reached them.

Again, there was that strange feeling of melting into the light, and this time Sheik didn't fight the sensation. The explosion passed through him as he was pulled into the light, and he could also feel something, Vaati probably, guiding him away from the blast. As soon as the light subsided, however, he could feel his body rematerialize, and that was when the remaining force of the explosion's blast collided into him. Sheik felt himself thrown into the air from the shockwave of the blast, and his ears buzzed with the deafening roar of the explosion that he'd returned to. His body slammed against the earth and he was tossed across the ground for several feet before he finally came to a stop against the incline of a hill.

With a groan, he forced himself to stay conscious. His arms barely supporting his weight, he shakily pushed himself up.

Vaati?

He reached out blindly while he waited for his senses to return. Suddenly, he felt fingers clasp his hands.

"I told you… to hang on."

Sheik nearly fell back onto the ground in relief when he heard Vaati's voice. When his vision slowly returned, he saw a mess of a sorcerer who was covered in dust, blood, and dirt from crawling over to where Sheik had been thrown. A mess, but alive. He held onto Vaati's hand tightly.

They dragged themselves up against a nearby boulder, and they rested their backs against it as they watched the world fall apart around them.

"Vaati."

The sorcerer turned his head towards Sheik tiredly. He tilted his head slightly, indicating that he was listening.

"This is the end, isn't it?" Sheik asked.

Vaati chortled, a grimace interrupting his bitter laugh from time to time when his bruised ribs jabbed his sides. "You know, I told Shadow Link that last night and he yelled at me," he chuckled lightly. A fond but forlorn smile played on his lips as he revisited the memory. "He actually yelled at me. How dare I not tell him that we were going to win?"

"I think I heard you arguing last night."

"He called me a grape."

Sheik laughed, but the laughter quickly died down along with his smile. It hurt to think about them, and he still had trouble coming to terms with the fact that they were really gone. They weren't coming back. He was never again going to hear their snarky little comments that never failed to make him smile. He was never again going to hear about Shadow's hilarious prank ideas, never again going to exchange jokes about Vaati with Ravio. They were gone. Gone.

Maybe Vaati had thought the same thing, because he, too, fell into a solemn silence. The two watched the colossal abomination as it continued to destroy the world. It leveled a mountain in the distance with its explosive breath.

"Shadow was right, you know," Vaati said after a while, a smile cracking on his lips again. "We're still going to win. We were always going to win."

Sheik turned to look at the sorcerer questioningly. Vaati was looking at the abomination with a distant look in his eyes.

"There's one spell that could even fell the gods," Vaati continued quietly.

It took a few seconds for Sheik to understand just what Vaati was talking about. In the background, explosions boomed and filled the brief silence. Eventually realization dawned on him, and color left his cheeks. "You can't mean-" he began, horrified. When Vaati simply smiled at him sadly, he vehemently shook his head. "Vaati, no. You know I can't."

"You're the only one who can."

"No, it can be you, too," Sheik insisted. "I know how powerful you are! You can beat him, too."

Vaati was powerful. He'd faced the sorcerer's Wrath form; he knew what kind of destructive power he wielded. Vaati had said it himself, he had the power of a god! Vaati could beat that monster just as much as he cou-

"No," Vaati said bluntly, and Sheik was taken aback by how serious he looked now.

Whatever argument Sheik had been about to make faltered under the intensity of the sorcerer's gaze, and the Sheikah shrunk back with a pained expression. Deep down, he knew that Vaati was right, that between the two of them, he with his Light Arrow had the best chance of defeating the abomination.

But he couldn't admit. He didn't want to admit it. He mentally screamed, swearing that Vaati was wrong, but on the outside he remained quiet. He couldn't find his voice.

Vaati smiled again, perhaps knowing what Sheik was thinking. He shook his head to himself, and then gave a weak shrug. "I was never chosen by the goddesses. At the end of the day my power is but an imperfect mimicry of true power. I only realized it after I shared this," he lifted Sheik's hand that was in his, and nodded at the mark of the Triforce that was etched into their skins, "with you."

Sheik shook his head slowly at first, and then he shook his head faster. He couldn't do what was being asked of him. He couldn't. "There has to be another way. Anything but this."

Vaati sighed and leaned his head back against the boulder behind them. He looked tired, then. Tired of everything he'd lived through and experienced. In that moment he almost looked his true age, rather than that of a youth in his twenties. "I always ridiculed those who were the Chosen Ones. You, your ancestors, the destined hero and their predecessors. The way they faced me with nothing but their idealism and hope. It offended me. Such flimsy, abstract concepts should have been worthless in the face of pure, raw power."

"Vaati…"

"And yet, time and time again I was thwarted. I didn't understand it. Every single one of you had nothing but hope and a sword, and yet you defeated me every time. Me, a being with the powers of a god," Vaati laughed bitterly to himself. Then, he sighed. It was the sigh on the last hour of daylight, of when kings removed their crowns and retired from the throne. "This power of yours carries hope, you know. I always lost because I only ever cared about how my power could end things. You won, and can win again and again because your power promises a beginning. It carries all the futures of everyone in the world."

"You just made all of that up," Sheik muttered under his breath.

"Perhaps," Vaati admitted with a chuckle, "But you can't deny that the arrow you wield is unlike anything else in the world. It banishes darkness like nothing else can."

Sheik shook his head again. He ignored Vaati's expectant gaze, and he ignored the sounds of explosions in the distance. He helplessly wished he could curl up and disappear. When it became clear that, no matter how long he waited, he was not going to be able to avoid answering Vaati, he turned away with a grimace. "Don't make me do this…"

"That thing isn't going to stop with this world. Once it's done here, it's going to destroy the Light World, too. It's not going to stop until there's nothing left to destroy."

Sheik gritted his teeth. Since when did Vaati start caring about what happened to the world?

Since when did Sheik stop?

"Do you remember what I told you at the Gerudo Fortress?" the Sheikah asked slowly, speaking of the time when they'd first spoken not as Sheik and Fuu, but as Sheik and Vaati. Twinrova had thought he'd completely lost his senses when the Sheikah had asserted that he would undo everything they had worked for at that point by returning the sorcerer's memories. Looking back, he hadn't been acting rationally at all, and he'd prepared himself for the possibility that he would lose his kingdom to the sorcerer.

He'd do it all again if he had to.

He'd do it again, now.

He didn't care about what happened to everything else.

You don't mean that.

… No, he didn't mean that.

… but he did.

Vaati grinned at Sheik's question, the corners of his eyes crinkling in a true smile as he remembered the day. "When you gave me permission to destroy your kingdom for my companionship? How could I forget?" he chuckled. Then, his expression darkened, and he suddenly leaned forward, bringing his face close. "Don't be a fool, Sheik. My time was up a long time ago."

The sorcerer looked at Sheik coolly with narrowed eyes, challenging him. He pulled back with a self-satisfied smile when Sheik turned away, but the fading light behind his eyes was but a hint to his own despair.

Vaati's expression softened, and he squeezed Sheik's hand gently. "My time was up after what was supposed to be my final fight against you. But you gave me a chance. My time was up when I lost against Agunima. But again, you gave me a chance. You've given me enough chances."

Sheik's shoulders shook, his face contorted into a pained snarl. His free hand was like a claw against the ground, his nails digging into the dirt until his knuckles were white. It's okay, Vaati's hand tried to tell him.

It wasn't.

It wasn't okay.

I can't do anything.

"I didn't understand why you kept saving me," Vaati mused with a whisper.

It hurt to breathe. He was helpless. There was a sharp pain in his chest that wouldn't go away. It wasn't from any bruises or broken bones; it wasn't something potions could heal. Sheik had finally succumbed to the fact that there was nothing he could say or do to stop what he was going to have to do, and he was falling apart. His breath came out in short, ragged gasps, begging, pleading for some other solution.

"I… because…"

He felt a hand on brush against his cheek, and he brought his own hand up, clinging to it, burying his face in it. His fingers trembled as they clasped Vaati's hand, and he stayed that way for a while, still unable to face Vaati. If he looked at him now, he surely wouldn't…

Pressure on his chin. Vaati forcing him to turn to look at him.

Until the very end we disagree, he thought as he yielded against the sorcerer's touch. He slowly, reluctantly lifted his head and met Vaati eye to eye even though it hurt him.

The perfect curl of Vaati's moonlight bangs, matching the curve of his chin. The lines across his nose from where he scowled too much, the familiar, cynical arch of his angled brows. The thin lips half parted in an uncertain smile, and the devastating look in his red eyes, the fires of wrath nothing but cold ashes now. Sheik took it all in.

Vaati pulled him close into a kiss. Simple, but not any less passionate. It was gentle, not wanting to linger but lingering. Held breaths, like time might stop for them.

A goodbye.

The ground shook with a wailing roar from the serpent in the distance.

"I understand now," Vaati said with a half-hearted smile as they reluctantly pulled away. He brushed the hair away from Sheik's face and for a moment it seemed like he was going to make one last quip about Sheik's desolate expression. However, his smile broke, and he was unable to find anything clever to say.

With heavy breath, he stood himself up and reached for Sheik's hand.

This time, Sheik didn't resist, and he slowly got up onto his feet. His earlier distress was gone, and had been replaced with defeated emptiness of one who knew it was pointless to go against what he'd known since the very beginning. In the end, he had a responsibility to his kingdom, and it didn't matter how afraid he was of being left completely alone in victory.

It didn't matter that a victory where he lost everyone he loved and cared about wasn't much of a victory at all. It didn't matter that he would have rather let the world burn than to survive without Vaati. Shadow. Ravio. Tenzi.

He wanted nothing more than to believe he was Sheik, but he was also Zelda, princess of Hyrule.

And since the beginning, the princess shouldered the world alone.

"Talk to me," Sheik whispered. He slowly lifted the hand that still held Vaati's. He hesitated as he brought his free hand in the air as well, struggling to force himself to start the spell that would be responsible for ending the life of someone he cared for more than he'd ever cared for anyone. Vaati obliged, and began recounting stories of the past.

"Do you remember when we first met? I think I showed up at your castle, gloating as I do. About what, I don't know. I might have broken all your windows and turned some of your guards to stone. I actually don't remember the first time we met. I didn't really think much about you, then. You were just another princess with the same name as all the others before you."

Beads of light began to gather around Sheik's hands, gradually pooling into the crescent shape of a longbow. It glowed brightly, gaining energy from the mark of the Triforce of Wisdom.

"But you ended up doing something no other princess had been foolish enough to do. You didn't seal me away. you didn't even try to kill me properly. Instead, you ended up giving me another chance. Shadow Link, too."

More light twisted and snaked along the bow, drawing runic marks along it in an ancient language. The two held the bow together, though Sheik found himself keeping an increasingly firmer grip around Vaati's slipping fingers.

"I'd forgotten what it was like to get in trouble until that time you woke me up too early in the morning, because you needed help hiding from Impa. And then all the times after that when I'd help sneak you out. I don't think Impa liked me very much for it."

It pained Sheik to hear the changes in Vaati's voice, which had become laborious and slightly slurred. The sorcerer's posture was beginning to sink as well, as his legs, drained of energy, struggled to support his weight. Still, Vaati pretended like nothing was wrong, and he redoubled his efforts to sound like his usual, pompous self.

"Technically I'm thousands of years old. But Impa asked me something, once. She'd asked, 'how many of those years have you actually lived?' At first, I was angry at her for asking that, but it was moments with you when I realized… she had been right to wonder."

A large arrow flashed into existence. Still keeping his right hand clasped tightly around Vaati's, Sheik pulled back on the bow's string. The sudden light caught the attention of the colossal serpent, and it swung its head menacingly in their direction.

Vaati's voice was now husky and labored. Still, he fought to remain conscious.

"I… know I seem like I've… resigned myself to my fate. But the truth is,"

And finally, the bravely reconciled countenance that Vaati had maintained for the both of them until now broke completely. There was an audible tremor in his voice, though he made one last ditch effort to hide it with a shattered chuckle.

"I don't want to die, Sheik."

Sheik bit down hard on his lips, focusing on the pain and the salt on his tongue as he bled. It was better than noticing how the sorcerer's head had slumped forward, or how he was just barely supporting his own weight now while the light of the Triforce gradually disappeared from the back of his hand.

Sheik took aim at the beast that was twisting its way towards him. The arrow shone brighter with holy light, but he felt none of the hope that Vaati had spoken about earlier. He had nothing left.

Courage.

Sheik blinked. He almost released the arrow early in his surprise. Who? He looked around as much as he was able to, certain that he'd heard someone speak. It had been like an echo in the back of his thoughts, and he thought it had been a woman who'd spoken. However, the distant timber of her voice almost made him think that her words hadn't been meant for him.

And then Sheik held his breath, because suddenly the fingers that had slipped away from him grasped his tightly once more. He looked across on the other side of the bow with trepidation, hope welling in him but holding it back out of fear that he was simply hallucinating everything now.

Vaati was standing again, his eyes full of life and ferocity that had been missing in the past few days, and Sheik felt the bow jerk back up for a proper aim at the colossal serpent when Vaati readjusted their aim. More power than anything Sheik had ever been able to summon alone with his own Light Arrow surged across the bow in his hands, and it was then he noticed that where the Triforce he'd shared had vanished from the back of Vaati's hand, a different triangle glowed brightly now. It was an inverted triangle, glowing brightest on the right-most corner.

"Vaati you're…" Sheik stammered.

Wisdom ran in bloodlines. Courage and Power manifested in champions selected by the divine. Sheik knew that Vaati never really believed in the goddesses, and in the rare instances he humored their existence, the sorcerer expressed frustration at their lack of an active role in looking over the people they claimed to love. Sheik could only believe that the voice he'd thought he heard had been real. The goddesses hadn't abandoned them.

Vaati flashed a brief grin, a familiar upward twist of his lips with that hint of cynicism. Sheik didn't realize how much he'd missed that grin until he'd seen it.

Vaati himself looked like there was a lot he wanted to say, and his grin flattened into a frustrated sigh as he glanced back at the inverted Triforce that had saved him. The sorcerer had a lot of choice thoughts regarding the divine and how they handled things in the mortal realm, mostly negative, but that rant could come later.

"We're ending this."

Sheik nodded, and together they pulled back on the arrow which had doubled to the size of a large spear. It shone twice as brightly, its rays cutting through the darkness like sunlight piercing the clouds. The serpent roared and charged at them with its gaping maw.

Now.

They let go of the arrow. Light trailed after it as it cut its path towards the towering beast. Compared to the serpent, it was a small thing, and it was so small that it was doubtful that it would be enough to stop it. However, Vaati had been right about one thing, and it was that there was something about the power of hope and the strength of will that would allow it to prevail against brute force of destruction.

When the arrow's rays reached the monster, there was a brilliant flash and the serpent gave a shrieking wail as it was cleanly split in two. The light parted the darkness in two and the serpent writhed and coiled until it slowly disintegrated into golden dust. Its numerous eyes swiveled towards the two with chilling wrath for one last moment until they, too, disappeared.

So… Vaati had been right, Sheik thought, watching the gold dust glimmering across the sky. He remembered what the sorcerer had said about power that carried despair versus power that carried hope. The dust floated down in a cascade of gold, shimmering from the sun that had returned from behind the vanishing clouds. It brought some color back to the still-ashen and deathly silent landscape.

Oh.

Sheik turned around, a sudden fear overcoming him. Vaati. What if he'd imagined the whole thing? What if he was still alone? What if-

He froze. Vaati was still there, standing with his eyes wide and staring back at him with a similar look of disbelief. He was ragged and worn, covered with dirt and bruises along with the specks of gold dust that continued to fall gently around them. Importantly, he was alive. They were both alive.

Vaati cracked a weak smile.

Tears streaming down his face, Sheik ran over and embraced him tightly. His shoulders shook violently and he clung to him, afraid to let go, to lose him again.

It was over.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

…

To my dearest friends,

I wonder if you'll think it silly that I keep writing you letters like this, even though I know I will never show them to you (they're quite embarrassing).

In a few days I'm finally going to be able to meet all of you. I haven't been so giddy since I was but a child. (I hope you will not be too angry about the misunderstanding that led to my kidnapping of a dear friend).

No matter what happens, no matter how much we must suffer to see this through, I just want to say that I believe… I truly believe that we will get through this together. You carry my hope, just as I carry yours. Hope is a powerful, wonderful thing.

We will win. I know we will. And we're all finally going to go home.

Together.

fleets: …
I've got nothing. I feel like anything I can possibly say about this chapter would empty and inappropriate right now.
One more chapter left. I hope you guys stick around ;u;

Icfehr: Ohhh I got confused when you said twin shadows (I think you mean fused shadow?). I just used the explanation that TP used (I think it was at some point during Link's weird dream) that said that the Fused Shadow had the power to control the Triforce (or something along those lines). The brute force bit kind of showed up in this chapter (like the multiple arms on the serpent monster thing)

AquilaMage: I will take any beating graciously because I probably deserve it. But I still think. I still think I know my audience pretty well

Vesperupus: I warned everyone about the pain train and I wasn't kidding. But I also promised something else, and it's that the train does end. (sighs) can't really do much else right now except put to the test how much trust I've earned with readers over the years hahaha

syphrilfox: Wellllll you're not going to like this but… yeah. Still looking for that rainbow :P

Serpent Tailed Angel: I always said that I don't think Dethl can ever really die, since they're Nightmare incarnate. They might be forgotten, but they're always out there. Somewhere. (mostly so I can recycle them as villains over and over and over and-)

Lunamew: To be perfectly honest I don't know why I never used that line sooner, given fandom's opinion on his grapeness.