"Mm. I love you."
The Sheikah had on no facemask, no shirt. The both of them had somehow become entwined in the sheets and in each other, and it was Sheik who had spoken.
Link beamed. "I love you too." He stole Sheik's lips in a kiss, pressing his tongue between the seam of pink mouth, his hands roving freely over the body that was forbidden to everyone else in Hyrule.
Sheik was still coming to terms with the fact that he'd fucked the Hero of Time. Three times now. Was that a sin or a record?
But this was all-right. It felt so good, and if both of them were happy, couldn't it work out? Couldn't it last? He didn't want this to stop anytime soon. If Link had died before in a temple, he'd have been devastated, but if he died now, Sheik didn't think he'd be able to live. This was the love Sheikah were warned against, the love that had dwindled their population until only two hundred or so Sheikah remained in all of Hyrule. It was a demanding, sinuous emotion, and it had trapped him.
He twined one hand in Link's hair and the other around his hips as they kissed, bringing them closer to each other, as close as possible, until it was one form instead of two. One body, one soul. There was such a poetic ring to it, and it sounded so lame, and so cliché, but it was so true.
"Link." Sheik nudged his shoulder and then returned to his position at the window, looking through warily, his eyes narrowed to glittering red slits. He was fully dressed in a moment and waited, clenching his fists against the windowsill as he heard Link pulling on his tunic behind him, and then his boots and finally sword and bow.
"What is it?" Link dared to ask in the stretching silence.
Sheik pointed. A group of shadows crept through the rainfall, crouched low to the ground, all of a variety of shapes and sizes. These were no travelers passing through. They were creatures of a dark form; of that, Sheik was sure. He'd seen enough Lizalfos in his lifetime to know that the leader was one, and so was half the group, but there was more than that. Satalfos warriors, bony hands clutching scimitars and their rotted flesh stringing off them in gangrenous peels, grunted softly with each step.
They were coming closer.
"My Gods, what are they doing here?"
"Link," Sheik said, "Get out of here. Go around the backside and hide in the crevice in the wall atop the cuckoo pen. I'll find you in twenty minutes."
"I'll be damned if you think I'm going to let you fight these things by yourself," Link replied, an edge of steel to his voice. Sheik glanced at him in the cold, vague light that filtered through the window, for the fire had long gone out and the embers were dead. His profile had a serenity to it that he had seen the Hylian don before. He was ready to fight.
"I am dispensable. You are not. If you die, then all of Hyrule is doomed. If I die, there will always be more Sheikah." It was hard to say, but needed to be said.
"If you die, then I die, too," Link said. "Friends in battle, no?"
He clenched his hands tighter around the Master Sword. Sheik pressed a hand to his mask and watched the company of creatures make their way across the main courtyard, to the base of the ledge that separated Impa's house from Kakariko—
--and vanish entirely.
"Let's go. Grab your pack," Sheik said, and Link needed no more prompting. They ducked out a back window onto the slope behind the house, and Sheik led the way, stealthily moving amongst the bushes as if it were second nature to him. And it was.
There was a roaring noise and he heard something that sounded like the front door being barred down, and then crashing noises and irritated, inhuman yells. It was an eerie noise in the calm of night, when everything should have been at peace. The rain still fell, and in moments they were drenched.
Sheik cast an invisibility spell around them both, the strongest one he could manage without collapsing or being weakened, and they paused.
"Search the village," came the command from inside.
Sheik froze, then half-dragged Link along behind him as he sprinted along the hillside, low to the ground so that none would see him. The underbrush clung to his limbs as if claws reaching from the grave, but he ignored any pain, steadily making a path through. He could hear a chorus of cries from Impa's house: The creatures had found their tracks. Link's, really. Sheik made no tracks.
"There they are! On the hillside!" Apparently they, too, had some kind of magical appendage. They could see right through his invisibility spell. Sheik dispelled the casting and turned to Link; there was no use in wasting energy keeping it up in present circumstances.
"We need to divert," Sheik said. "Give me your fire tunic."
"What?" Link was wearing the Zora tunic at the moment, and Sheik delved into Link's pack and dragged out the cloth garment, donning it quickly. Now he looked somewhat like Link; from a distance it would be hard to tell unless one managed to catch the glint of his red eyes. They were both blonde, and about the same height and build after all.
"You go to the graveyard. I'll make it around the windmill and meet you in half an hour. If I'm not back by then, I've been killed or otherwise, and you need to go into the temple as planned. This is no time to fight, we'll not outnumber them. Do you understand?" Link looked shaken, his eyes wide and frightened. Sheik grabbed him around the shoulders and gave him a soft shake. "Link! Do you understand me? We don't have much time."
"I—yes, I understand."
Sheik kissed him then, short and sweet, and left him with a lingering touch before darting down the hill and across the courtyard. He paused at the well, both to make sure the creatures would see him and so that he could check that Link was doing as he was supposed to.
Link had obeyed, and he could see a steady figure moving down and across the hillside towards the graveyard, his head bent low.
The creatures did, in fact, catch sight of him, and gave a long unanimous roar as they sped towards him. Sheik made a big dramatic show of waving his arms and looking terrified for as long as he could delay, then sprinted off towards the ladder that led up to the backside of the windmill.
He had one foot on the third rung when he looked up: two lizalfos waited there, their fangs twisted up in a horrid mockery of a smile. Both of them jumped at the same time, and Sheik darted back, landed a kick on one and smashed in the skull of the other against the stone wall. He'd broken ribs; those two wouldn't be up anytime soon, even if the second one was still alive. Time for a change of plan.
He ran up to the second tier of the village, above the courtyard. There was a watchtower there, and he hit the ladder of it just as he looked around to see that two Stalfos warriors guarded the entrance to Death Mountain, while six more were behind him, cutting him off from the rest of the village. They formed a semicircle around him.
He was forced to climb, and so he did.
One caught ahold of his leg; he kicked out without thinking and heard the sickening thwuck of a body hitting the ground. There were humans in the group, too. Had he killed one of them? Not that that held any kind of moral significance to Sheik. They were enemies and would die whether it was right or wrong.
He made it to the top. Now they could only climb in single file to reach him.
A lizalfos came first; he kicked it off. Another came and he smashed his boot into its face, but another leapt up right behind it, catching hold of his ankle and dragging itself up to the platform, then helping two more onto the small watchtower as well. There were humans after that, burly kinds of men, and Sheik lashed out like a caged and wounded animal, knocking the lizalfos off and smashing one of the men into the side. He sank to the ground, unconscious, or worse.
He'd have to make a jump. There was no telling if he could make it, but he had to try.
Ten of the original sixteen of the party remained. He'd kept count. That left more than he could handle on his own. In a suicidal (and momentary) decision he leapt onto the balustrade of the tower, balancing precariously on the edge, and dropped to the underside of the tower, clinging onto the wooden underside, then going hand-over-hand down the support opposite the ladder. Nothing could reach him and he could climb safely down, unless…
They gathered at the base.
Shit. What now?
He'd have to fight.
He made no noise, only stood facing them sideways so as to be a smaller target. None of them carried ranged weapons, which was good. Or maybe he'd just disposed of the ones who had. Some bared knives or swords or scimitars, raised them, made ready to fight.
They were reluctant to approach him.
Finally one rushed at him. The others merely watched as he unarmed the skeleton warrior, snapped off its arm in one quick blow and then cracked its neck in half. Without its head it was powerless, and it fell dead to the ground.
This seemed to excite the others. Three more ran at him while the remaining six stayed behind; these were a human and two stalfos skeleton warriors.
He could take three armed opponents at once. One came for him with his dagger and he plucked it out of his outstretched hand, stabbing him in the heart and then arcing to slice the jugular (or where the jugular would be; he simply cut through the spinal cord) of the other in one fluid motion. A switch of the feet, a shift of the hands; it really was like a kind of sick, barbaric dance.
The third stalfos and Sheik exchanged blows, neither wanting to move in further. Finally Sheik made as if he were going to stab the skeleton in the ribs and twist out a few and then pulled a fake, using his other hand to sever this one's neck as well.
"You cannot win against six of us," a lizalfos said, presumably the leader, and all six of them rushed in at once.
Sheik was beginning to tire. He kicked out at the legs of one and connected with someone's skull with his fist before he was grabbed about the waist and then the legs. He struggled madly; NO! They wouldn't kill him. He had to meet Link, he had to meet Link, he had to help Link, he had to…
He twisted out of one's grip and brought him down with a sweep of a dagger, but then his arm was caught and jerked. He could feel his wrist snap, the bone crunching at the ends, as it was twisted wildly, and he screamed from pain as he fell to his knees and was grabbed up again and hefted by the collar by a few lizalfos. One of them conjured a witchlight, a floating ball of luminescence, and held it up to his face. This one was the leader.
"Is it the Hero?"
One of the humans came forth. Sheik recognized him as one of the guards who had tortured him before during his… stay.. in Ganon's castle.
"No. It's the Sheikah."
"Where is Impa?" the lizalfos seethed, pressing a knife to Sheik's throat. Sheik gave a tired grin, showing teeth. "Dead. Went to the Shadow Temple and didn't come back," he replied. Well, it was a half-truth.
One of them struck him across the face and he felt his lip split, blood and muck running down his chin. The area underneath his eye began to swell up.
"Lies," it hissed. "The Great Impa would not die so easily."
Another came up and set a heavy hand on the shoulders of the one who was interrogating him. "Do not wound him yet. The Kazed-ha has ordered otherwise."
Sheik suddenly twisted out of both their grasps, and threw off a third. Yes, he was free! If only he could make it out of the group then he could get to the windmill and—
He was struck over the head with the flat of someone's sword. His vision crossed and then uncrossed and became blurred. A haze of red descended, as before, and he could see nothing but a hand coming up and supporting him, and then he couldn't tell if the blackness was his own or if it was of many claws and hands covering his eyes.
The leader of the party spat into the ground. "How many?" he asked his second-in-command in Lizalfian.
"Eleven."
"Gesth-dakt," the first swore in their mother tongue. "Have the two lizalfos who are left tie him and drug him to make sure he sleeps. We have a long way to go."
"How did the Dark King know he would be here?"
"He knows more than you or I ever could," the first replied, and turned away.
"One Sheikah took down so many of us?" One of the humans asked a lizalfos, crouching at the head of the blonde Sheikah. Sheik's eyes were half-closed, unseeing, and he may have had a concussion, but the job had been done. Their orders to capture the Sheikah had been carried through.
"We did not even manage to find the Hero of Time," the lizalfos said, clearly irritated. "Only half of our orders have been completed."
"I dare not go into the Shadow Temple to follow him. Not for all the gold the Kazed-ha can give me." The human bundled a heavy cloak around Sheik and then produced a vial of a greenish fluid, uncorking it and coaxing it down Sheik's throat. A sleeping drug, perhaps a stronger one than was necessary. But the Dark King had wanted him weakened, and this was the easiest way to do it.
"And I as well," the lizalfos replied, watching this procedure, then helping the first mount his horse and lift Sheik up in front of him, a bundle held like a sleeping child. "Perhaps the Sheikah sacrificed himself as a diversion from the Hero's escaping…?" he suggested then. It had been nagging at his mind for the past hour.
"It is possible," the human replied, and they began the long ride.