The Legend of Zelda, its characters and locations are all property of Nintendo. Any and all OCs and original locations belong to me unless specifically stated to belong to someone else.

The Voice
Chapter 56 - A Teaching Moment

The library was evidently the right choice for the conversation Sheik was about to have with his tinier self, judging by the way some of the tension went out of his shoulders upon seeing the bookcases and carpeted floors and wooden walls—a stark contrast to the circuit board hallways and the painfully empty room Sheik had found him in.

Sheik glanced down at Stabby (who had latched onto that name and refused to let go, to his chagrin), feeling a little guilty for thinking of him that way. Because Stabby wasn't really just a small version of Sheik. Sure, there were bits and pieces of Sheik in Stabby, but those were trifles compared to the rest of the ineffably complex series of algorithms and subroutines that made up his brain.

But at the same time, Stabby had Sheik's face, and...well, if anything, it felt more like Stabby was his...his...

No, no, no!

Absolutely not!

We're not even the same species, let alone related!

"This place looks different," Sheik said as they walked past row after row of books/system information. "Did you make it like this?"

"Mhm," Stabby said, smiling shyly. "It looks better this way, doesn't it?"

Sheik didn't know what it had looked like before Stabby rearranged it, but he could easily imagine the same circuit board floor and walls, and...hell, probably boring filing cabinets for the information itself. Compared to that, he definitely considered the library an improvement. As for the sense of calm it brought him...well, he had no explanation for that.

"It does," he agreed, feeling a bit jittery and anxious about this whole situation. "Why a library, though?"

The little AI shrugged. "It feels peaceful."

Fair enough, Sheik supposed.

Things weren't going according to plan. Stabby wasn't supposed to be a proper, real entity unto himself. He was supposed to be the Ganon-infused monster Sheik had envisioned the thing driving the bio-mechanical monstrosity of a body to be. Things would have been easier, then. Sheik would have destroyed the monster, deleted every trace of it, and taken the body for himself, if he were able to figure out how to operate it.

But no, Stabby just had to be a fledgling artificial intelligence, the sort the Sheikah scientists would have killed to create a millennium ago.

Had killed to create, Sheik reminded himself. They just weren't successful.

So here they were, two minds in one body, and about to have what Sheik imagined would be an incredibly awkward and downright painful conversation.

They reached an intersection and, seeing no other noteworthy landmarks in the massive room, Sheik decided this was a good a place as any. He closed his eyes, imagined what he wanted...and opened them to find a pair of comfortable chairs facing each other in the middle of the intersection, a small table between them.

It wasn't much—being the root user Sheik could have envisioned something far grander, but Stabby didn't strike him as the sort who enjoyed ostentatiousness, if the cosy atmosphere of the library was anything to judge by. The pleased smile on the AI's face was all the assurance he needed, and he motioned to one of the chairs.

"Have a seat," he said, a little amused when Stabby needed two tries to climb into the chair, which was just a little too high for him. It was strange, interacting with someone like this. Like they were in the real world, instead of a virtual one. Acting like they had bodies. He wondered if Stabby was just humouring him, or if this was how he genuinely saw the world as an AI, even inside himself.

Sitting in his own chair, Sheik was almost surprised at the accuracy of the simulation. The leather creaked beneath his weight. The seat even sank a little. He took a moment to study the texture of the upholstery, partly because he was fascinated by the power of Stabby's hardware, but also because the way Stabby was looking at him made him a little uncomfortable.

The kid was smiling at him. Looking excited, even. Like the events of...minutes? Hours? Some time ago hadn't happened, like he hadn't been begging Sheik to not make it hurt when he was deleted. The panic and fear could have been leftovers from Ganon, but...

"Right," he said slowly, trying to order the vast amount of questions he had into something that approached a proper order. It was quite difficult, and just finding one to start with proved challenging as whatever question was deemed appropriate slipped out of his mind's grasp before they could be brought to the surface. "You...you are..."

"Stabby," Stabby helpfully supplied.

I really should have come up with a better nickname for him, Sheik thought. No one should look that pleased at being named for a murder method.

"That's...right," he said, blinking. "And...do you know...what you are, Stabby?"

Stabby frowned a bit at that, but the smile quickly returned. "I'm like you," he said. "Machine intelligence. But you're...older."

Sheik wondered if smacking the AI upside the head would be considered child abuse. Virtual child abuse? Din above, this was going to drive him mental!

Yes, technically in terms of lifetime, Sheik was older, but if Stabby was partially based on copies of him, then that meant at least parts of him were just as old!

Right, getting side-tracked here, he thought. Gotta clear up the misconception.

"I'm...not like you," he said. "My mind was once flesh and blood, but it was stolen from me and put into the slate, thousands of years ago. It didn't work at the time, but the Shrine of Resurrection seems to have fixed what was wrong. I only awoke a short time ago."

Stabby frowned a little deeper, his eyes going a little distant. "But...I'm...you?" he said slowly. "How can I be you, if you were real?"

They should have done this to a scientist, not just a grunt, Sheik thought. They would've had an easier time trying to explain this.

"What's the first thing you remember?" he asked instead. "How long have you been...awake, for the lack of a better word?"

Stabby thought some more. "Two months, sixteen days, seven hours, thirty-three minutes and seven seconds," he replied. "The first thing I remember is...the voice. Screaming at me, telling me to get up, get out. To find the Hero of Hyrule, slay him, and recover the Sheikah Slate. Destroy it, if necessary." He looked at his feet, dangling over the floor. "I'm sorry. It said it would...would k—"

"Don't apologise," Sheik said, shaking his head. "Your actions were under duress, and you were...new. Confused. What else could you have done?"

"I could have fought harder," Stabby said, looking up with a surprisingly sharp glint to his eyes. "I could have...could have delayed my actions! He told me to kill, and I just...did it. I killed so many..."

Sheik narrowed his eyes. He'd known that was a possibility, that Link wasn't Stabby's first taste of blood. But who else had suffered at his hands?

"Who did you kill?" he asked carefully, if not kindly. There were only so many ways to ask that question.

"I...don't know," Stabby said, suddenly finding the floor interesting again. "I just wanted the screaming to stop...so I did as I was told. They were...they looked like us. But...white hair."

Sheik tensed in his seat. Stabby had killed Sheikah?

"Red suits...I took one of them..."

He breathed out. Yiga, then. The enemy. He had no problem with Stabby killing them. Aside from the horror of forcing a newly born AI to kill as its first actions, of course.

"Those were Yiga," he said. "They are in league with Ganon."

It didn't seem to be much of a comfort to Stabby, who continued to stare glumly at the carpet's patterns. If anything, it only seemed to make him feel worse.

"It said...they were just in the way," he said after a while. "Obstacles. Nothing more."

"Seems about right," Sheik said. "The embodiment of evil doesn't seem the type to care about its allies." He hesitated. "Anyone else...?"

"N-No," Stabby said, looking up at him with wide eyes. "I swear...the Hylian...Link..."

"Will be fine," Sheik said firmly, despite having no idea if he got Link out in time to be healed by Mipha. He'd better.

He expected to feel a sharp stab of anger at Stabby for what he'd done, but...it didn't come. By all rights he should have been shouting and screaming abuse at the AI for what he had done, but just remembering how terrified and tormented Stabby had been when Sheik found him with Ganon caused it all to evaporate.

"Link is tough, he's had far worse. I mean...you're...you must remember something about him?"

Stabby shook his head. "Ganon took it all away. All I could remember is what he looked like, and that he's the Hero. Everything else was...erased. Ripped out of me." He touched the side of his head, digging his fingers into the skin. "It hurt so much..."

Some might consider it a cruelty to give a machine intelligence and sapience. Sheik didn't quite know how to feel about it, on account of him being something in-between machine and biological. However, letting it feel pain definitely was in his opinion. Physical or mental, it didn't matter.

"You've had a rough time," he said. "But...it's over now. You're free."

"Free?" Stabby asked, looking up at him in confusion. "Aren't...aren't you my new master?"

Sheik recoiled, staring at Stabby with wide eyes. "Wh-What?" he asked, nearly choking on his own words (an odd thing to do in a virtual world, but right now he was just going with it). "Why w-would you think that?!"

Stabby looked like he'd just had the rug pulled out from under him, utter incomprehension in his expression. "You...you killed Ganon and took over. Y-You're the root user now. You're my master!"

"I'm not your mas—fucking hell!" Sheik exploded out of his chair, pacing back and forth, nearly kicking the small table aside. "I. Am. Not. Your. Master," he said as slowly and clearly as he could. "You are no one's slave. Not anymore."

"But I'm just a machine—"Stabby began.

"You are not a machine," Sheik said. "You're something else. Something new, something the world has never seen before." He fought the urge to reach out, pick up this tiny little thing and shake him until he understood. "You're so much more than a machine."

"But I'm not...like you?" Stabby asked.

"No," he admitted. "We're both...new. Different from each other, but similar in many ways."

Stabby had trouble wrapping his head around that, judging by his grimace. Sheik knew the feeling. Frankly, he still had trouble figuring himself out even now, after learning everything he wanted to know thanks to Purah and (eugh) Robbie.

"I don't get it," Stabby finally said, sounding and looking as offended at the notion of not understanding something as Sheik felt whenever he hit a similar conundrum, and was unable to figure it out right away.

"Me neither, kid, me neither," he said. "But I'm sure we'll be able to figure it out, sooner or later."

"We?"

Did he look excited or disappointed at that? Sheik wasn't certain.

"That's the most pressing matter right now," Sheik said, returning to his seat, suppressing a shudder at the kid calling him master. It made him feel unclean, somehow. "I only wrote myself in as the root user because I thought I would have to fight you."

Stabby nodded, as if that was a given.

"But what I found wasn't what I expected, and now...I don't know what to do, because we are two minds...and we have one body." He leaned a little forward in his seat. "We need to decide who gets to control it."

Technically, Sheik was in control right now. The body had been knocked out of commission by a power overload some time ago, likely a shock arrow judging by the diagnostics from the incident, but he'd kept it dormant ever since he'd gained root access.

He could, in theory, take the body and leave Stabby to roam the virtual halls as a user with no privileges other than those Sheik allowed him. He could be allowed to look through Sheik's eyes, hear through Sheik's ears—experience the world vicariously through him.

A prisoner with no way to interact with anything around him.

A fate worse than death, in Sheik's opinion. It had been bad enough being stuck in the slate, where he could at least shout to make himself heard. Compared to this, it would be kinder to delete Stabby and be done with it, and pretend he'd never existed in the first place.

The old Sheik—the one that had lived, or the one that had awoken in the Shrine of Resurrection and felt nothing but anger and hate—would have done so in a heartbeat, with no hesitation. Now he simply found the idea of such an action abominable.

He'd grown since then, in some ways.

He still enjoyed pissing people off for no reason, but it wasn't like he did it out of cruelty or malice.

Most of the time, at least.

(Revali had it coming, though, the feathered prick.)

And this was, again technically, Stabby's body, not Sheik's. He hadn't asked for it, but Ganon had put him in it nonetheless, and Sheik was, at best, a guest in it. At worst, a parasitic invader. And he couldn't find it in himself to outright steal it, either. Turns out that being with Link and Sidon had seeds of some form of decency in him, whether he liked it or not.

(He didn't).

So, he was prepared to offer Stabby a compromise. Sheik would restore Stabby's super user privileges in order for him to regain control of body, but Sheik would remain as the root user. They would take turns at being in control. Sheik would be able to explain to Link why he shouldn't kill the creature that had just tried to stab him to death, and Stabby would get to experience the world as he should, as a free individual, no longer under the yoke of a monstrous evil.

And that was why he was so surprised when Stabby looked him dead in the eyes and said, "Take it."

Sheik had queued up so many arguments and reasons for why their compromise would work that it took him an embarrassingly long moment to utter a completely confused, "Huh?"

"Take it," Stabby repeated. "I don't want it. All I've done with it is kill, and I...I don't want to do that anymore. I don't want to hurt anyone." His voice grew quieter with each word, the last one barely a whisper. "Please, don't make me..."

"I'm not going to make you do anything," Sheik said, wishing he could burn Ganon out for a second, third, fourth time until the fucking thing got the idea and just...vanished. And took its physical form out in Hyrule with it. "You don't have to do anything you don't want to do. We can share it—"

"That won't work," Stabby said, shaking his head. "You know it won't. We'd be...competing. We'd start hating each other. And...and you deserve it."

"I wouldn't know about th—"

"I felt it, you know. Your love for the Hero." The kid gave Sheik a tight smile beneath misty eyes. "When I saw him...I felt what you felt. But it forced me to...to...I can't take that again. I can't face him! Please, don't make me!"

Stabby's eyes were beginning to shine again, his voice cracking with distress. All of a sudden, it was like the library had grown colder, the shadows deepening. If Sheik doubted where the room's design had come from before, it would've been banished by now. He held up his hands in what he hoped was a placating manner.

"Okay, okay, I'm not going to make you do anything," he said, hoping to reinforce just how different he was from Ganon...even though he did sort of want to make Stabby and Link meet each other properly, if only so Stabby could apologise and Link could forgive him pretty much instantly, which was exactly how that situation would play out.

Stabby didn't know that, though. He only knew the lies he'd been fed by Ganon, and as much as Sheik wanted to believe that Stabby would see his logic, he forgot too easily that the AI was, for all intents and purposes, still a child.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so—"

"Hey, none of that," Sheik said, quickly coming to stand in front of Stabby's chair, crouching down so he didn't tower over him, hesitant to reach out and touch the kid. "Hey, look at me. Look at me!"

It took a moment, but Stabby eventually stopped hiding behind his hands, misty eyes meeting Sheik's.

Exactly whose visualisation was this? Sheik's or Stabby's? Whosever it was, it was remarkably detailed...just like everything else Sheik had encountered in this shared space. And just like a real child crying would (no matter how much he would deny it if someone asked), it cut through bone and marrow. Din above, how Sheik wished he could burn out Ganon again!

"Now listen to me very carefully," he said, keeping his gaze locked with Stabby's. "I don't blame you for what you were forced to do—you understand that, right?"

Stabby looked doubtful. Well, Sheik had no problem being honest.

"Well, I don't," he said, emphasising that last word. "If I did, we wouldn't be here, having this conversation. If I blamed you, you would never even have known that I was here, because I would've deleted you along with Ganon's malice right away."

Stabby gasped a little, curling up a little tighter in the chair.

Shit; the opposite of what Sheik wanted.

"But!" he exclaimed. "I didn't, did I? We're here, we're talking. So...do you believe me?"

A long pause.

"I...guess I h-have no choice," Stabby said after a while, giving Sheik a look that was part scared, part wry, and, wouldn't you know it, part annoyed. Maybe there was more of Sheik in Stabby than he'd thought. "Unless there's s-something you need f-from me."

"There's absolutely nothing you can do in this body that I can't," Sheik replied. "Not after I gained root access. Believe me, it is not out of utility that I've kept you around. So, the only conclusion is...?"

"You...forgive me?"

"Exactly," he said, nodding. "And, seeing as I don't exactly have a high threshold when it comes to being spiteful or holding a grudge, I can guarantee you that Link will forgive you as well, once he learns of the circumstances, because he's too nice for his own good. That is my promise to you."

"I don't...I can't—"

"You will have to face him sometime, if only so he'll believe me when I tell him the stupid story that led us to this moment," Sheik forged on, ignoring the slight pang of guilt he felt at the look of panic on Stabby's face. His face. Fuck, it was so weird looking at him. "And if he doesn't forgive you...well, I still won't let him harm you. Not that he will," he added.

Stabby looked away for another long moment, face screwing up as he internally debated with himself.

Literally.

Sheik could see the data streams being passed to and from the processes that made up Stabby's consciousness. He couldn't read everything, on account of not really understanding how the hell Stabby's mind worked (including how it had apparently created several new programming languages, both high and low level, on the fly), but he could definitely tell that the AI was having a fierce argument with itself.

"Fine," came the curt answer, after which Stabby pouted.

Pouted.

Ganon shouldn't have wasted its creation by sending Stabby after Link. It should have hoarded Stabby, raised him, allowed him to grow. Gods knew how powerful Stabby could have become, given time. It was a frightening thought.

"But I still don't want the body."

Sheik sighed, nodding. "All right," he said. "I'll enter it into the logs, then. We've reached the consensus that I am given permanent control of the physical vessel. Agreed?"

"Agreed," Stabby said without hesitation. "I'm transferring all the documentation to you now."

Sheik blinked. "There's documentation?" Who'd have thought that Ganon, of all beings, would commit to creating a proper manual to something Sheik suspected it had just thrown together with no rhyme or reason to anything?

Stabby looked a little bashful.

"I...put it together," he admitted. "I had to figure everything out on my own, after waking up and...well, it was something to do, during the screaming..." He nodded towards the nearest shelf, where a book had appeared.

Sheik retrieved it, opening it up to find meticulous documentation of the bio-mechanical body's functions and processes, everything Sheik needed to keep it running properly, and what it was capable of. It was...a hefty tome. A lot of information to be absorb.

It was a good thing Sheik enjoyed reading.

Along with the treasure trove documenting how the body functioned, there were also system logs, combat logs, battle reports...and recordings. Unable to contain his own curiosity, Sheik looked through some of them. What he saw was...awful.

From Stabby's point of view, he saw the body engaging in combat with Yiga operatives, their red bodysuits and white masks a dead giveaway. Sheik watched as Stabby systematically and meticulously fought and disarmed...and executed the Yiga with no hesitation.

"It made me watch them," Stabby said. "Again and again. Said I had to learn from it and use it against the Hero when we found him." He looked nauseated at the thought. "That I had to...enjoy the carnage."

"Ganon said that to you?" Sheik asked, closing the footage. He didn't want to watch it...at least not with Stabby there. "I didn't realise it was smart enough to speak...at least not coherently."

"It's not," Stabby said, brow furrowing. "But...it got in my head...and its intentions..."

Sheik hummed, closing down the documentation once he'd memorised what he needed. "Well, you'll never have to deal Ganon and its intentions ever again. It's just a matter of time now before Link puts it down for good and saves the princess while he's at it."

Stabby smiled a little at that. "There's a princess?" he asked.

"Oh, Ganon didn't tell you?" Sheik asked. "Shit, that's a story and a half, but yeah, there's a princess. She's basically the only thing holding Ganon back from rampaging all over the world. Link's trying to help her—that's why we've been freeing the Divine Beasts." He snorted. "This is starting to sound like a fucking fairy-tale—erm, I mean..."

He trailed off. Cursing in front of the young, very impressionable AI was probably not a good idea. Maybe he'd stopped himself before it was too late, however...

"It really fucking does," Stabby agreed happily.

Damn it!

Sheik couldn't stop himself from laughing, all the while wondering if Link was going to yell at him for teaching a child to swear.