Author: Rydia Highwind
Email: chichiri_is_hot@hotmail.com
Fandom: Legend of Zelda : Ocarina of Time (in-game)
Rating: probably eventually R. PG, for this chapter.
Summary: Sheik's thoughts and feelings throughout the game.
Warning: Eventual shounen ai (in other words, two boys getting it on), Link/Sheik. Semi-AU, as in Sheik and Zelda are not the same person. This will be explained in later chapters. Sheik is nutso, despite my best efforts to make him otherwise. I can't write normal characters, apparently. First person, present tense.
Disclaimer: The characters (excepting occasional shop owners and the like) and the setting aren't mine, though I wish they were cause I'd be rich then.

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Thanatos
by Rydia Highwind

Chapter 2 : Allegro

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I seen the sign up ahead
At the county line bridge
Saying all there's good and nothingness is dead
Run until she's out of breath
She ran until there's nothing left
She hit the end, it's just her window ledge

- The Wallflowers "One Headlight"

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He doesn't wake up until the first strains of sunrise are leaking through the east facing window and I am pulled from my light doze by an intelligible murmur. He has long since given up fighting my grip holding his arm in the water, and by now, I have gotten a chair to rest in, keeping my eye on him and only allowing myself to nod off for short periods of time.

Inquisitive to this new development, I quietly round the bed to his side and place a hand on his forehead. The fever has diminished greatly but is not completely gone. At my touch, he moves slightly and by the time I remove my hand, two slivers of sapphire blue have found me.

"Good morning," I say, and the purple hues of daybreak favor his face, playing with the natural colors still there, though paled. The sunrise makes him look healthy again. For a moment after I pull my hand away, I can almost pretend he is not ill.

He blinks at me, the light from the sun obscuring his view. I can tell that he cannot even see who I am, and I move slightly so that my shadow crosses his face. It still takes him a moment, for there is only one lamp lit in the room and the light from the window is likely making my face seem much darker than it is. But he sees me soon enough.

"S-Sheik? I...where..?"

He is confused--that much is obvious. But his recognition of me is enough to assure me that the poison in his bloodstream is not going to turn him undead any longer. Enough of it has been counteracted that he is no longer in danger. The hand I had left hovering near my knife relaxes.

He tries tentatively to sit up, but I gently press him back down. "Calm down, you're safe here." I am kneeling by his bed so that he can see me more easily. "We are in an inn in Kakariko, and you are recovering from a ReDead bite."

He looks away from me now, his eyes catching a bit of the daybreak glow and seeming to shine for a moment as he tries to remember what has happened. His eyes lose focus for a moment. "ReDead bite...? Wait, Kakariko?" He looks back at me, frowning and realizing just how far away that is from wherever he expected to be.

"Yes." I offer him a nod. "And keep your arm in that basin. You are no longer in any immediate danger, but the ReDead venom can still affect you adversely." I pause as he glances carefully at his arm, and obediently dips it further into the water. "Do you remember meeting me in the Temple of Time?"

He nods fractionally. "And you brought me all the way here?" He is not looking at me, but rather at the far wall.

"There was no other way to ensure your safety." I can tell, though, from his near-silent sigh that this is not the response he is hoping to hear. I decide though not to inquire. If he wishes to confide in me, he will do so on his own.

I find that he does indeed do so. He doesn't look at me still. I begin to wonder if I have broken some sort of taboo that I did not know about. But it could also be dismissed as an aftereffect of the ReDead venom, I remind myself. "And...why did you want to ensure my safety?" he asks so softly I can barely hear him. "Is it because I'm the Hero of Time?"

There is something in his voice, in his actions, I can see through it. It is not a test of the sort I am used to, a test to prove my intentions, but it is a test. Whether or not he means it to be is another story entirely. I find, however, that I cannot tell exactly what he wants from me at this point. I allow my head to shift slightly to the left, focusing on his face. "I suppose that was certainly part of it," I say slowly. "What is it you want me to say?"

He turned toward me, almost a little too quickly, and I half expect him to knock himself back out with the suddenness of his motion, but he seems fine. "What?" he asked, the confusion evident in his eyes still alit with the morning light. "What do you mean?" He blinks a few times, and frowns. "I'm not testing you, Sheik, I just want to know why."

"And," I remind him gently, "there is a certain answer you wish to hear. Maybe you are not trying to test me but that is in fact what you are doing."

Silence reigns for a moment and he blinks at me, still a bit confused it seems. But after a moment, he seems to drop the matter, glancing up at the ceiling and then back at me a moment later. His eyes are solemn, eyes I know should be sparkling with happiness. The Goddesses knew he deserved to be happy, after being told he was the one of destiny, the only one who could save Hyrule, and then having seven years of his life stolen from him....

"You feel sorry for me?" he muses, breaking the eye contact we had been holding and shattering my thoughts. "Is that why you helped me?"

I cannot help but feel a little guilty, because that is just what I had been doing, sitting there feeling sorry for him. No, that isn't what he needs right now. I am not exactly certain what he needs, but pity is most definitely not it. "No," I say, "that isn't why I helped you. Perhaps I do pity what you have been through, but pity changes nothing."

I stand up from where I am seated next to the bed. "You must be hungry," I say, not wishing to continue the conversation. "I will find something for you to eat."

Before I can leave his side, though, he manages to catch my attention. "Wait," he says, and I obey, turning to face him from the foot of the bed. "Before you go. Tell me. You said...that my being the Hero of Time was only part of why you brought me here. Why? I need to know, Sheik." An innocent and earnest look is glowing in his eyes.

I pause, not exactly sure how to answer him. I feel as though he is looking for a friend, a shoulder to lean on in these trying times. I did not know him before the Dark Lord tricked him and took the Triforce for his own, but I know he must have had many friends. A ten year old boy cannot enter the Sacred Realm by his own power. He had friends. He had help.

When he awakened, he had stepped into a completely different world. A world where seven years had passed and familiar faces became strangers and no one remembered the little Kokiri boy who had visited them seven years ago. He is lonely. He is asking if I will be a friend to him and ease his loneliness. And I do not know what to tell him.

"I was sent here by the Sheikah Order," I tell him quietly, knowing very well this is not what he wants to hear. "I was sent to watch you, to aid you on your quest. I was meeting you there to guide you. I brought you here to help you."

I expect to find disappointment on his face, but he surprises me. "But you stayed here all night, didn't you? To...make sure I was okay?" he says slowly, a thoughtful expression on his face. "You could have left me under the care of the innkeeper, or just let me sleep."

For a moment I am silent, leaning against the doorjamb and turning over his words in my mind. While he does have a valid point, I begin to list off in my mind the flaws with his theory. First of all, I had been needed to keep his arm in the water, and secondly, the innkeeper hadn't even wanted Link there in the first place. But he is right, what I have done for him could easily have been done by someone else. The thought will not leave me, and I'm not really sure how to reply.

"Do not make things more than they are," I say quietly after a long pause. "I know you must feel lonely right now, but I am here simply because it is my duty. I have an obligation to you through my duty to my people. To place you under the eye of someone else would be careless. It is my responsibility to not be careless."

I pause for a moment, wondering if I have been too harsh with him. But no, I tell myself, whether or not he is emotionally ready, the Three did not bring him back as a man by mistake. He is a man now, and he must deal with these matters on his own.

"I will get you something to eat," I say, and I do not look back at his face as I leave.

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The market is crowded as it always is at this time of day. It is the morning bustle, filled with people setting up shop and others trying to find the best wares before someone else got them. Most of the shops are set up by the time I make it outside, the sun already well in the sky, though the light filtering down has a decidedly red tinge to it. The mountain up above is rumbling ominously, its keepers having been captured and slowly devoured by a giant dragon. The Dark Lord has enslaved the entire race of the gentle Gorons, making them an example by a slow genocide.

He is performing a much faster genocide with the Sheikahs. The tribe members are captured on sight by his minions, or killed if capture is out of the question. All too many of my peers have gone on missions and not come back, and it is not safe for me to be walking around in a busy city with the eye of the Sheikah clearly printed on my stole. Kakariko, however, has not thusly been dealt with much, and I have no street clothes with me anyway.

My first priority, before finding breakfast for the stricken hero, is to acquire a new cowl, as mine was likely contaminated by the ReDead's poison. It isn't hard to find a suitable replacement, I find quickly, weaving in and out of the crowd. The first linen dealer I find actually sells for a reasonable price and soon, I am safely hidden behind the required garments of the Sheikah tribe.

Even as I am adjusting my new scarf, I hear the gruff voice of the vender that had sold me the holy water the day previous. I suppose I only note that he is talking because he is talking about me. "A Sheikah?" he is saying, and I pause, listening but not yet looking. "Yeah, sold him some yesterday. You friends of his? I think I saw him over there... yeah, right over there."

At this I turn my eyes toward the vendor, now pointing directly at me. It seems I am rather hard to miss in a crowd, and it is my undoing in this case. The people he is addressing are a group of Gerudos, the Dark One's minions.

I do not know how they found me here, or how they knew to ask for a Sheikah who had purchased holy water, but now is not the time for questions. Instead, I duck down so that I am no longer visible in the crowd, quickly going over the map of what I know about the town. They will expect me to move away from them, so instead I move due east, knowing the city spreads further east of my current location. Already I hear a shrill female voice yelling something angry in a foreign tongue, and the crowd around me begins to panic.

This is to my favor to start with. The confusion will slow my pursuers until the crowd finally calms or dissipates. I find it easy enough to move through the crowd, as it isn't hard to anticipate the crowd movement, and I am not headed in one specific direction anyway.

Ducking behind and dodging people, I quickly make my way to a back alley behind a row of shops nearby of which the crowd has all but deserted. There comes a sharp whistle from behind me that I take to mean I have been seen. I unsheathe one of my knives, taking a quick glance behind me before taking off in a full fledged sprint down the alley. There are four of them in the passage with me, and there is no way I can take them all at once.

Gerudos prefer close combat, with weapons such as lances and swords, but I know enough from seven years of the Dark Lord's reign that his minions can be counted on to pull something unexpected. It is treacherous for me to remain out in the open as I am. One well aimed throwing knife or arrow and I will be down not long after.

However, Sheikahs are quite well-versed in the art of long range weapons.

I make a gamble, turning the corner after the next building and slowing my gait briefly to determine my next move. I see what I had been hoping for, and allow myself a grim smile, grasping the cold hilt of the dagger in my hand. There is still a very good chance my risk will not pay off, but I give myself approximately three seconds to position myself before the first of my pursuers rounds the corner.

Three seconds will not be enough time to climb to the roof of the building to my right by way of the stack of crates piled next to the wall. But three seconds is plenty of time to get behind the crates, and this is exactly the course of action I follow.

When the first Gerudo rounds the corner, she is quickly greeted by my dagger, which imbeds itself quite neatly in the center of her forehead. I do not pause to watch her fall, though my peripheral vision tells me she makes quite dramatic work of her death, the momentum of the knife slamming her head back, and the forward motion of her body causing her legs to keep moving forward. She lands flat on her back, stunning her three companions, and giving me more than sufficient time to reach the roof.

Being on the rooftops, of course, presents another problem--which is namely staying on top of them. Kakariko is filled with towering peaks and angled eaves, allowing the frequent rainfall that the village is met with to run to the gutters on the edges and drain properly. However, I know this will present the same problem to my pursuers. Perhaps not the best point to take comfort in, but the situation presents me with little else.

The Gerudos are fast, but not careful, for the next goes down with a blade in her throat. I am to the next rooftop before they can clear her body away and follow me up. Another whistle sounds from behind me, another direction. I have made a critical mistake, it would seem. The Gerudos have been watching the rooftops for me as well.

And so I do the only thing I can do at this point. I run.

Leaving the rooftops will gain me no advantage I can find, my pursuers are close enough behind me that I would not have enough time to weave back into the crowd milling about below before they had me. They have caught me at my own game, it would seem.

An arrow whizzes by me, coming from my left and flying by only a few inches in front of me. Had I been going minutely faster, it would have been lodged in my left ear. So they are coming from the north as well. I do not shift directions, for a moving target is harder to hit when moving horizontally across the archer's line of vision. This doesn't seem to matter too much, though, for the next arrow does not miss, but instead is buried in my shoulder. Someone yells something triumphantly, but I am not down yet.

I ignore the burning pain coursing through my arm, thankful that the houses here are close enough to jump from one to another without much effort. The tilted shingled roofs make the running difficult, but doable. I hear a shriek from behind me as one of the girls slips, falling from the rooftops and effectively taking her out of the chase.

There is not time to remove the arrow, my concentration must remain on getting to the next rooftop. I can sense them closing on the northern side and I know they are trying to corral me a certain direction, to a certain point. I am not very familiar with the town much further than my current location (of which I'm not entirely sure of at this point anyway) and I know this is not to my advantage. It is all too likely that they are leading me to a dead end.

I keep heading forward, trying not to let them force me any certain way, but with the arrows flying ever more thickly, it is suicidal to deviate too close to the group to the north. So I turn south slightly, and I am forced to notice the rooftops are getting much harder to leap. I am not certain if this is the effect of blood loss, though that seems unlikely with the arrowhead still in my arm, or if it is because the houses are further apart.

It turns out not to matter much anyway, as one of the Gerudos behind me manages to hit me with either an arrow or a knife--I cannot tell at this point--in the shoulder blade just before I would have jumped, knocking me down into the streets below instead.

I am unhurt from the fall, having rolled to end it, keeping me from any harm save the deepening of my wounds. It takes some serious effort, but I am quickly on my feet again, clawing at the object lodged in my shoulder blade as I again begin to run. Fortunately, it seems to be an arrow rather than a knife, which would have done more damage and given me more blood loss to worry about. Even though my chances are slim, I will not give up. If the Gerudos know that I am here, they likely know that Link is here as well, and I will not let them find him.

My legs ache with overexertion and my back and shoulder is sending throbbing rivulets of pain up and down my upper body. My hair is plastered to my forehead with perspiration and my new cowl tastes of salt and sweat. I know I cannot keep this pace much longer. But I have to keep them busy so that they will not find him. I have to keep going.

There is a rushing sound from in front of me, and I cannot tell if I am hearing things or if there really is something ahead of me making such a noise. It is faint at first, but as I keep running it grows louder and louder. The Gerudos will not let me turn off, too many of them flank each side of me. A glance over my shoulder proves what I'd feared--they hadn't forgotten to close behind me as well.

It isn't long at all before I realize exactly what that rushing noise I had noted earlier was, and I know then that the chase is nearly over.

There is a river curving around the southern edge of the town, the rapid flow of water cascading down the mountain each spring having carved a deep ravine that marked the southern border of Kakariko. I had barely even noticed that the Gerudos had changed my course from east to south in the course of the chase. I am now headed straight for the river, surging more powerfully than normal due to the volcanic activity atop Death Mountain, and there is no way I can avoid it.

It is only a few moments before I am forced to stop, gasping for breath, and Gerudos on all sides of me. Of course, this is perfect for them. Sheikahs boast hefty bounties alive. They have only not killed me because they fully intend on bringing me to the Dark Lord alive. I shiver with the thought, turning around to face them, my back to the river so close I can feel the spray of the raging waters on my legs.

"Mo nah hemak!" One of the Gerudos is speaking, she seems to be the leader of sorts. She motions to me and two of the Gerudos on either side of her respond with a "kkh" sound that has to be an affirmative because then they move toward me.

It is now that I must act, doing whatever it is that I can to get away from these bounty hunters. I would much rather be dead than prisoner of the Dark One. And so there is only one option I have. I slow my breathing and heart rate as much as I can before the Gerudos can get to me.

And then I step backwards, into the ravine.

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End of Chapter 2 : Allegro.

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WEEEE. Wow, that took me a long time to write. Do you have ANY idea how much Sheik didn't want to write this chapter? He didn't like it, you see (as you can probably tell) and so he made it even harder than normal to write a chase scene in first person, present tense. If you don't believe me that that's hard, go try it yourself.

Mine still ended up crappy. Oh well. That whole chapter is utter crap. x___X;

My Gerudos speak bastard Arabic, taught to me by Katie. ::hugs for Katie:: And Mara proofed this for me, so hugs for Mara too. ^_^ Also, if you find any grammatical errors, feel free to yell at Mara. XD Kidding. :P Mara is awesome because she writes my Sheikah language which hasn't appeared in the fic and may never BUT IF I EVER NEED IT I HAVE MARA!

Oh, um, Sheik isn't dead cause that would sort of ruin the story. XD He pushed up on the control stick when he fell off the roof, that's why he didn't get hurt. :P

I'm sorry my chapters are so short. ;_; I'll try to update sooner this time. Ack. x.x;

Here's a random point of interest: If you ever get picked on by a Dark Link, give him a quarter and he'll be amused by hours at the shininess of it. Seriously. ^_^

Well, feel free to email me at chichiri_is_hot@hotmail.com with comments or questions on the fic. ^_^