Of Duty and Devotion, a legend of zelda fanfic

Title: Of Duty and Devotion
Author: EA

Timeline: Pre-OoT up through OoT
Summary: When someone you love dies, their soul never really leaves or fades away. It simply…moves on. OoT and earlier from Impa's POV; Sheik and Impa-centric.

Disclaimer: Considering that none of this really belongs to me, it's rather pointless to sue, isn't it?

Notes: Honestly, I have no idea where I'm going with this… This will probably be a blend of the game and manga. Mostly manga, though…I think. I took a few liberties with the Sheikah and all that…just because I could. Call it artistic license…or something. (re: I totally made up a lot of stuff in this story…)

Pardon the spatial placement of things, by the way. Assume that the world of Hyrule, while the same, is…slightly stretched and skewered in places. Meaning that Kakariko is close to the castle, much like in the game. I mean, since Kakariko was a Sheikah village, and the Sheikah were the guardians of the royal family, it makes sense for the two to live near each other? Er, within reasonable walking distance, at least…

This is my very first Zelda fic, by the way, but I won't ask you to be nice. Gimme criticism so I can grow! (Of course, nice reviews are certainly welcome, too!)

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Of Duty and Devotion
By EA

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When someone you love dies, their soul never really leaves or fades away. It simply…moves on. Perhaps it will melt into the grass, giving beautiful flowers life, or maybe it will be the gentle caress of a summer breeze. It could even stay with you, forever…and ever more. Perchance.

That is the Sheikah belief, that nothing is created and nothing is destroyed. Things simply recycle themselves, and nothing is new or dead. …When I was a little girl, though, I didn't understand this concept. I couldn't believe that my soul was not uniquely my own – that it was bits of pieces of my ancestor's…that I could have the life of a tree or bird within me. This belief, though, was what shaped our culture and way of life.

We were one with everything, so why should we not use the tricks and chemistry of nature? How could we be individuals when we were comprised of everything? Our bodies, our souls…they were not our own. That's what we were taught, and that's why we lived to serve nature and others, to be their shadows because we were a part of them, and them us. Anything without a shadow in the sun's mighty gaze is unnatural, after all, and a shadow on its own ceases to exist.

I was thirteen before I finally understood and accepted all this.

Back when I was a child, Kakariko was solely a Sheikah village; my family lived there, and with many other families we made a close-knit community. Aside from my brother, who was four years my elder, and myself, there were but four or five other children – the rest were young and old adults alike. I rarely played with the other children because, as my mother used to say, I was shy and quiet, but with a heart like the sun. That was all right, though, because when he'd finally come home for dinner after traipsing around with the other village children, my brother would play with me and teach me songs.

By the fire we would sit as a family and play traditional music…or music that the Composer Brothers had taught my brother, with him on the harp and my father on the bongo drums; my mother and I would sing, and then later on I learned how to whistle. Together the four of us would play what we considered beautiful music until we could no more.

My mother and father worked in the castle, she as the queen's attendant and he as a Royal gardener. When I was eight, she began taking me to the castle with her so that I could learn how to care for and serve the Royal Family as best I could, letting me help the maids with their daily chores. My father always wanted my brother to eventually be a musician to the Royal Family, much like his elder friends the Composer Brothers, but only to me would he confide his dream of being a wandering minstrel – of seeing the world and playing music to revitalize the weary. However, my mother always knew about it – you could tell anything from my brother's expressive eyes…

According to her, he always had such selfish dreams. She'd tell him that he would have no future as a wanderer, that she didn't name him Sheik so he'd drown in obscurity. My mother wanted him to be a part of destiny – to be someone.

I know now that there is very much that children can do to change the world…but at the time Sheik…my big brother…had no name for himself at seventeen…and no future, either.

Though our numbers had dwindled from the past, we Sheikah were still large in number, spread vastly throughout Hyrule. But we were most concentrated in the thereabouts of the castle as shadows to the Royal Family. I was thirteen at the time when it happened, out running an errand with my mother. Even today, while the rest of the details are sketchy, I firmly believe that this was the will of the Goddesses…to spare us so we could continue serving the family for many years. After all, that belief keeps me whole.

Whether it was an actual threat or act of paranoia I may never know…but on that day we, the Sheikah with a single eye as our crest, were betrayed by our country…by our king. His army murdered countless in the castle and nearby village… Perhaps they would have gone as far as exterminating all the Sheikah in the kingdom had it not been for the fact that the king's shadow attendant continued his duty of protecting his king, even after being fatally wounded by our sovereign himself.

After all, nothing can be without a shadow, and a shadow cannot exist alone.

Aside from my mother and I, there were a few of our kind living in and near the castle that had survived. It was by miracle of the goddesses only that any of us survived; a miracle that I thank the goddesses every day for, so that I can continue to serve those dear to me. My father and brother, though…

Like many of our friends and family, they had been working at the castle at the time… For a few days, as the Royal Guard attempted to soothe the pain of our people, the village became a refuge for Sheikah families all over who had lost loved ones. Sad to say, but there were only fifty at the most; the majority of the survivors were elderly, whose children were slaughtered. Since our people were in chaos following that disaster, we hardly knew what was going on, or who had survived.

It was a Sheikah custom to keep dead kinsmen in the house for one whole week before burial, but while the village tried to honor this tradition, it was very difficult with the incredible number of casualties. A few surviving members of broken families discarded this age-old tradition out of grief and convenience, invoking the harsh criticism of many of the elderly. It was blasphemous, they said, to the Goddesses and souls of the dead to treat the corpses with such irreverence, burning them in masses before the soul had a chance to move on to the next stage of life. Through such wicked acts as that, Poes, concentrations of hatred, were born, they warned.

But in the aftermath of crisis, surviving is all that matters. Our village quickly turned macabre with the bodies and souls of the dead stagnating. Nightly, as we identified our dead, we held enormous burnings and spread the ashes of the many deceased into mass graves.

We finally had confirmation of the fate of our men a few days after the disaster when my mother and I gazed into the lifeless eyes of father and Sheik. My mother, begging the body of her dead husband…my father for forgiveness, had decided to quickly dispose of the bodies instead of waiting the customary week.

My memory of it all is vague; I was young and understood very little of how and why this had happened. I didn't understand why families…why my mother would discard a part of our heritage like that. The day we found father and brother, I remember, though, I stayed in my room, curled up in a small ball on my bed, simply crying. My room had become my only safe haven; I was forbidden to leave the village, but there was no place that was untouched by death. The grass seemed permanently stained an inauspicious red and the stench was unforgettable; it had even permeated the tranquility of my room.

Nightfall quickly came, though…and I remember feeling quite guilty at having stayed in my room the entire day, not paying my respects to the dead. While my mother helped prepare the fire, I stole into the common area of our house where my father and brother laid, each wrapped in a white cloth, on the floor. Peering at the face of my brother, I realized with curiosity that he appeared to have been untouched by violence; his face was pristine as always. As I brushed a stray tendril away from his forehead, it felt so cold…but the very touch made my hand tingle. With the utmost care, I unwrapped the cloth surrounding him, unable to believe that my big brother was truly…dead. Unlike my father, whose face was covered by the cloth, Sheik's face was so…peaceful, so content. Gazing at the skin and organs underneath the cloth that had already begun to decay I saw that my brother…he really was dead.

There's a clear difference between simply acknowledging something and seeing it. As I watched the still, yet softly glowing face of my beloved brother, I couldn't help but want to steal him away to my room, to keep him with me forever rather than have his body be burned to ashes. I didn't want him to leave me, and I felt that I would do anything…just as long as he was there, living, breathing, by my side again. It didn't make sense – nothing did. Why not someone who frankly deserved to die? Why my father and brother? What did they do wrong?

What did I do wrong?

I hugged his limp and cold body tightly with a single thought running prevalent: I want him back. My brother…my dead brother…I wanted him to be with me forever, never leaving my side.

There's something about the power of the heart that the Sheikah hold sacred, a mysterious, yet wholly natural, mystifying power that binds two souls together. My people don't pretend to understand it, but we celebrate it fully and forcefully. After all, that mysterious power is said to be the same one that holds the world together.

I was too young and inexperienced then in life to really know what happened, but I now know that the mysterious power of the heart that binds…bound my brother's soul with my own. When it happened and the loneliness and pain in my heart was soothed, I thought that perhaps I had made spiritual peace with his soul, something the elders always stressed. I simply did not realize what had actually happened, though…

Often have I asked this question of myself: Had I known what I know now, would I have done it differently? By binding my brother's soul to mine, I had denied him his peace, his necessary transition to another life form. Had an elder known what I had done, I would have been labeled as an evil woman, for such an act as I committed is considered a serious crime to the Sheikah.

Really, though, would I have?

When I was older and realized what I had inadvertently done to my dear brother, I felt tormented by my own want of having him near and the ways and ethics of my people. Many, many years passed until I realized, looking into the determined eyes of a young Hylian princess who had announced to me that she would live the next seven years of her life as a Sheikah male, that no, I would have changed nothing. I would have bound my brother's soul to my own again to later serve my charge with, because I am a Sheikah woman – a good Sheikah woman – whose role in life is to serve the Princess of Destiny.

…After all the bodies were burned and buried, my people struggled to go back to living, which in itself was very painful considering that most of those we loved dearly were dead. The elders barely lasted long after such a tragedy, but, though it took a while, those younger, like my mother, established a stable life. The disaster and betrayal of the past seemed distant, like we were numb to the pain of remembrance, so my people added a teardrop to our crest to symbolize the tears we were seemed unable to shed. We would never forget.

Surviving Sheikah men traveled around our beautiful land, planting remarkable, mystical devices known to us as the Gossip Stones. Those who traveled never came back, though. It was my mother who knew that upon planting the stone, the man who did so would commit ritual suicide so his soul would stay inside the stone and guard our land. An honorable sacrifice to the ones we lived to serve.

Little by little, things grew better, but, like the elders had warned, Poes were born out of such irreverence for the dead, mostly keeping to the graveyard, though, and the ReDead had threatened to take over our small village numerous times. It took the strong Sheikah magic I had acquired several years later to finally banish them underground when our numbers grew increasingly scarce and the decision was made to open Kakariko Village to the world.

My mother continued to serve the queen for many years while I assisted her in between my training to become a loyal and capable warrior; however, I never once saw battle in the war that our Royal Family were fighting. My reason for training was that of a more important one: it was an order given to me by the king himself who had announced that when his wife was with child, I would be the royal babe's guardian, utilizing my training to protect her with my life. When the miracle finally happened, though, the queen, sadly, passed away while giving birth…leaving her shadow alone and distraught. A shadow cannot exist by itself, and my mother soon afterwards took her own life in an honorable suicide. I cannot say that I wasn't sad when she died, but I felt little of the oppressive feeling due to the fact that I could quite justifiably lose myself in my tiny new charge, Princess Zelda.

She was a remarkable child, possessing a gift of prophecy that had quite startled me. I was not used to such magical tendencies in normal Hylians, but I should have known that she anything but normal. Watching her grow up was a joy, and I made a point to teach her Sheikah knowledge and practices so she could further enhance her gift. After all, the spirits of the land who give the gift of Sight resonate strongly only with one who can feel them. Thanks to my brother, I could feel that and instruct Zelda on the knowledge I had gained from it.

When she was ten, though, she had a truly amazing dream that we both felt was a prophecy from the goddesses: a young boy with a fairy would come from the forest and save the beautiful land of Hyrule from the coming darkness, most undoubtedly the ruler of the Gerudos. Her father, of course, didn't believe that such a dream could be a prophecy, and, for the smallest moment, I am ashamed to admit, I harbored doubt as well, but all that was dispelled once the boy with the fairy did come. My Princess sent the brave lad on a quest for the Spiritual Stones, but before he was able to deliver them into her hands, the Gerudo King known as Ganon made his move.

With his army of the fierce undead, he stormed the castle, causing chaos and ruining everything…assassinating the king… Even though it was not in my duty to look after him, to this day, I still feel as if I could have saved him, assisting his shadow. But, I realize that if I had done that, then my duty – my life – would have been killed without me to protect her.

And that would not have been acceptable.

After assassinating the king, Ganon sought out the princess next, but it seemed that my attempts to hide her from him were useless and eventually he found us. It was the most terrifying moment of my life, feeling as if everything I had experienced to that point had been in preparation for that moment; however, a calm exterior was necessary to throw the enemy off guard and reassure the princess. She's so observant, though, that I would be surprised if she told me she hadn't known the true depth of my fear. I found solace, though, in the remembrance that I was not alone – Sheik was there, too, inside of me. It was the strength I needed.

Everything was such a blur that I don't know how we managed to escape safely from the King of the Gerudos, fleeing from the castle on horseback. It was necessary to leave everything behind to keep this one, important little girl safe – and to survive, you must do anything and everything you can.

It was at that moment that the brave little lad came through, and my little princess begged me to stop for him, but to do so would have gotten us killed – an option I couldn't afford us to choose. Instead, she threw to him the legendary Ocarina of Time, a mystical instrument and key to the Door of Time. It was dangerous and reckless, but necessary.

I still have nightmares about those moments in which we choose the wrong options and are killed for it.

We escaped to a far off place protected by Sheikah magic that I prayed to the goddesses Ganondorf wouldn't be able to find and penetrate. It was there that my little princess told me she would be living the next seven years of her life as a Sheikah boy, working under the Gerudo man until the Hero of Time, that brave little lad, came back. The pride in her that I felt was overwhelming, but still, I was very concerned for her safety. She seemed to have no regard for that, though.

It is with very strong Sheikah magic that I changed her and painted on an appearance that I had always remembered as my brother…and with that, something happened that I hadn't meant. In remembering my brother I felt the bond our souls shared all those years slip and give way into her – and once I felt that happening, for the safety of Sheik, I had to complete the transaction fully, consequently locking her inside her own body.

And for a moment, I thought that my brother would remember me and all the good times we shared…but he wasn't the same. True, he would always remember me and recognize me due to the length of time our souls shared connected, but he had no knowledge of life before death. In a way, I was relieved.

Zelda…or rather, Sheik and I parted after I trained him extensively in the art of Sheikah fighting – they to Ganon's macabre castle and I to Kakariko Village. At first, I was uneasy with letting my charge go out on her own, but then I realized that I could still watch over them with my mind's eye due to such a strong emotional and spiritual connection we had. I had begun to refer to them collectively since the princess and spirit of my deceased brother shared the same body.

It was dangerous and nerve-wracking, watching them serve Ganondorf, if only as spies, in my mind's eye, but as the years went on, it was a little easier for me; even though the world became increasingly worse, I watched them less and less…until I felt it – the coming of the Hero of Time. Though I knew that he and Sheik had miraculously made contact, it was a while before he – Link, it was – chanced upon Kakariko Village. I wasn't prepared for him to visit me so soon, so when he did come, I felt such an energy that I thought it was surely one of Ganon's underlings; I attacked him with this thought in my mind until I noticed the crest of the Royal Family on his sword. He had grown up into a fine, handsome young man, and I hadn't even recognized him at first.

However, I was disappointed in his lack of discipline and regard for the severity of his actions, so I set it upon myself to teach him, force him to grow – to beat Ganon. We trained for days, only stopping to eat and sleep, until he had the opportunity to fight a monster in the form of his own shadow that copied his movements…and won. When that happened, I felt a surge of pride, and as I pierced his ears as the ancient rite of passage for a Sheikah man, I knew that this young man would save our beautiful land of Hyrule.

When he left, I knew I could not follow him in my mind, but instead I took to watching over Sheik more. I imagine he disliked my intrusiveness, but…for my own sake, I had to see to it that he was the hero I knew he was. It was almost a routine between Sheik and I; he would let me watch when he was in Ganon's castle and especially when he encountered Link. Then, when the hero's travels led him to the Desert of Illusions, things changed. At first, as he and Sheik went alongside in the desert, he'd let me invade in and watch…but then he would shut me out abruptly, leaving me with no clue as to how things were turning out.

Sheik definitely had a personality of his own, I remembered, unlike that of my brother and the princess. Whereas my brother was outgoing and very kind, he was quite introverted, unwilling to tell me things I asked sometimes; he was terribly evasive, though, much like my deceased brother was, which ended up serving him well while working under Ganondorf. It was like he had absorbed traits from those around him to form his own being – having my introversion, my brother's evasiveness, and Zelda's eloquence. How well his soul adapted and blended in never ceased to amaze me, and even still I think of it as an embodiment of the Sheikah beliefs we held so dear.

For an entire night and day he shut me out, and it wasn't until he was locked in a sword fight with the Hero of Time that I was allowed to see through his eyes. While I was proud of him for holding up so well against Link, I knew that he had done something dishonorable, because even through the great physical distance between us, he held some guilt in his heart. But whatever it was, I knew that he must have had to do it, which filled me with a sense of security – that I knew that he would do whatever it took to ensure Link's victory against Ganon.

However, this feeling of security was shaken when I saw the attack from an old hag of Ganondorf's on him, followed by an immediate darkness through his eyes. As long as I could still feel him, though, I felt things were relatively alright; Link wouldn't let Sheik be killed, I put my faith in that. However…I felt my contact from him fading within the hours, until I saw through his eyes clearly, even without the aid of my mind's eye.

The lock on the spell had been broken and Zelda, for the first time in seven years, took charge by undoing the rest of my magic in front of a rightfully confused Hero of Time.

And then I was forcefully shut out as the spell was completely lifted…but by doing so, the princess freed the soul of my brother entirely. When it left, I felt like a vital part of me was gone forever.

Forever is such a definite word for a parting, isn't it? You see, when someone you love dies, their soul never really leaves or fades away.

It simply…moves on.

End

2/1/04 – 3/7/04