SO I FINALLY GOT AROUND TO UPDATING. School's ending and finals are happening and it's been insane, so I stole a bit of time to get in the mood to write this fanfic. Hmm, this one's drawing to a close, kinda... I wonder what else I should write when this one's finished? Maybe I'll do an Inuyasha.

And thanks to everyone who's ranted/complemented me at Suteki, and also all of you who just like to email rather than write your comments. Oo One little fanfic and the love just pours in. No wonder people publish their work online.

'Specially Misty, Nash, Shay, Kira, and MiroxSango. Love you guys. 3

There was only the sound of breathing: a gentle, fluid sound that didn't continue and didn't end. Thankfully, it didn't end. He was counting before he really was aware that he was counting. It was a Sheikah trick: remember each breath and when you get to fifty, pull yourself together.

Thirty-seven. Eight. Nine.

He was dreaming shallowly. He could see himself talking to Link somewhere, far away, standing in a sunny grove with his arms folded like usual and his cowl pulled down (again, like usual) and everything seemed normal.

Dark clouds rolled in on the horizons, began to pour rain on the both of them.

Forty five. Six. Seven.

This is what Zelda meant. This was what she was talking about: so the dream was real? Is any of this real? Am I… alive?

He saw the Gerudo fortress quite suddenly, and it seemed like he was floating above it. All of a sudden he saw Link walk up to the gate, speak with the guards.

In a moment he was shot through with arrows, shafts sticking from each end of his body, his heart's blood spurting out of arteries in quick jets of crimson mixing with the sand…

Forty eight.

His eyes, full of pain, searched for someone familiar as he fell to his knees and lay there in the sand bleeding…

Forty nine. Fifty.

Sheik opened his eyes. Link would be going to the Spirit temple soon, and he wouldn't be able to get in. The Gerudo wouldn't let him. He wouldn't know what to do. What if they killed him outright? Sheik hadn't warned him, and it would be his fault, his fault…

"How are you feeling?" It was that slave-girl. What was her—oh, right, Nasuerah. Bit hard for his tongue to pronounce at the moment since it felt sort of thick, and his mouth wouldn't form any words of its own. Every thought stopped at the corner of his mind. He felt hard-limbed, heavy, dense. So he merely settled for a shake of his head… the universal sign for I feel like shit.

He leaned himself up on one elbow. Someone had covered him with a large blanket and then left him there on the top of Ganon's bed. Or had the coverlet simply been pulled over and folded twice? Well, he didn't know, and he wasn't paying much attention to details at the moment. He felt all foggy-headed.

"Would you like a glass of… water?" She asked then. Her black eyes were sharp, apologetic. Why apologize? That's the look of a guilty person, Sheik told himself. But then maybe it was just sympathy. But he didn't want that.

He nodded again. She rose without a noise, disappeared, came back with a goblet full of water. He studied it for a moment: How gaudy, how garish! But that was all he would manage because he drank it down as if it were like nothing he'd ever tasted.

There was a tang to the water but maybe it was just his imagination.

Now he could speak. "A… a mirror?" he asked slowly, trying out his voice, proud when he succeeded that much without so much as a quiver. She complied instantly and brought him a small hand-mirror. He looked at it with an unreadable expression.

His face was swollen on one side from some kind of bruise: yes, completely black down one side, but this was the worst of it and it would stop swelling and reduce by tomorrow. How long had he been sleeping? Eh, well, didn't matter. He was lucky he hadn't broken anything but his wrist, which was still completely useless, though as he examined his shoulders and chest he found numerous crusted-over cuts and scabs.

And there were hand-grip marks on his upper arms. How embarrassing.

After a moment when it was completely clear he wasn't going to make any conversation on his own, Nasuerah rose and left.

"Ring the bell if you need anything," she added before disappearing.

He dressed himself then in the same clothing. He didn't care anymore. He felt numb inside, the same static that was threatening to completely consume his mind and leave him nothing more than a husk without a soul. Eventually he moved over to the side of the room and let it consume him, let it throw him back into a shallow world of nightmares.

He slept. Troubled dreams, but sleep all the same.

She stared at the empty glass of water, back in the slave quarters. It was laughing at her almost, if physical objects could laugh. She could actually see the powder that hadn't been completely dissolved crusting on the bottom of the glass.

"Ai, is that it?" Tayla prompted, slinking in from somewhere. "The poison?"

"It's not poison," Nasuerah hissed. "It is a… a relaxant."

"And what's the King using it for, I wonder? Hmmm?" Tayla asked.

"I don't know, I don't know. Don't you have work to do?"

"Perhaps. I'm getting dressed before I go out there, though…" she was already wearing a top that was far more low cut than usual, revealing her tiny waist and ample breasts, paying compliment to the swell of her hips. Her dark, liquid eyes were lined with golden kohl and her lips were painted seductively, glistening in the light that the dim slave-quarters offered.

"You are a whore," Nasuerah said, disgusted.

"I love you too," Tayla said, and blew a kiss at her fellow slave-girl before whisking out the door and into Ganon's personal quarters. The rest of the girls soon followed in order, each one more ridiculously made up than the last. Nasuerah repressed the urge to puke at this show, and instead fingered the necklace her mother had given her. It was her only possession, her only real gift.

She'd been twelve when they'd brought her to the dark palace to work here. And though Ganon had asked many things of them, he had allowed them their personal possessions, because he was not so stupid as to incite rebellion in his slaves. And taking away this would have made her angrier than anyone. It was ornate, made of gold, and incredibly beautiful.

It was said in her family that the necklace brought good dreams to whoever wore it. It was true; Nasuerah had never had a nightmare in all her time of wearing the necklace.

She stood and walked into the kitchen section of the quarters. No time to dwell.

"Ai, what's your name?" A voice prompted, and Sheik knew it was one of those idiot girls again. He raised his red eyes very slowly, tiredly. He was against the back wall again, slumped in the corner. He didn't want to go anywhere near the bed.

Beautiful, and if the circumstances were different he'd probably have pushed his charms on her, but considering the circumstances he wasn't in any mood at all to be friendly. "Sheik," he said gruffly.

"Weeeeeeeell. Aren't you handsome." She winked at him, picked up the pillows and began fixing the bed. He took a deep breath.

"Don't you like to talk? My master, he enjoys talking with us, and sometimes a little more. He usually prefers me for the 'more'." She gave another of those slow smiles. Sheik was reminded of a cat on the hunt for rodents, and winced accordingly. "Er, I'm sure he does," he said quietly.

She finished that and swept off to fix the furnishings on the wardrobe, to tuck in things and to dust underneath. Two other girls came up to him and grinned: "Mister Sheikah, if there's anything we can do for you, please let us know," one of them said in a low voice.

Sheik felt trapped. Four girls now stood in front of him, peering at him curiously and each one in a kind of dancer's pose.

"Hey! What did I say? Get out of here, all of you!" An angry voice. Nasuerah's voice. At that moment nothing could have been quite as comforting, except for Link's, of course. Gods, could he think of nothing else? Love was going to kill him. Literally.

"Sir," she said, when they were appropriately gone and disappeared back to the quarters, "I've brought food."

"Thank-you, but I don't want it," Sheik said dismally.

"I…" Oh, dear, this was awkward. "It's… an order… if you don't eat then I'll have to… make you… please," she begged. There was sincerity in her eyes. She wasn't lying about the 'making' part, though he doubted she could so much as lay a hand on him if she wanted to, even in the condition he was in. He sighed and took the tray from her, and she muttered a word of thanks, then perked back up again instantly.

"I noticed you were dreaming badly," she said.

"Was I?" He really didn't want the food.

"I… have a gift, I suppose," she said. "This will help you sleep well." She lifted the amulet from around her head and handed it to him, almost shyly.

He looked at it questioningly.

"It's a dream amulet," she said. "My mother gave it to me. It… brings dreams, and sometimes glimpses of the future and other things, if you're lucky. A seeing-woman in our Gerudo village gave it to her when she was just a girl."

"I can't take this."

"You must! You need it more than I do," she pleaded.

"No, I really can't. Ganon will take it from me." This was true.

"Then…" she curled her hand, hesitated, then took his wrist. He recoiled from the touch, but when he realized she wasn't planning to hurt him, provided his bandaged wrist once more.

It was still broken, and a stab of pain lanced up his arm when she peeled back a section of the cloth he'd bound around it and tucked in the amulet.

"I don't know if it will work properly, but if it does then I am glad," she said.

"You shouldn't talk to me anymore," he said, staring at his wrist. There was no sign that anything was concealed there. "He'll become suspicious."

"Maybe," she said slowly. She doubted Ganon would mind. She was, after all, putting the mind-relaxant into Sheik's food and drink, just like she'd been ordered. See, she was programmed. She was nothing but a tool after all. She sighed and rose up from her knees, then moved to the edge of the room, where the door was, and then was gone. No goodbyes were offered.

Ganon didn't return that night. He fell asleep in the corner of the room, as far from that cursed bed as was physically possible.

He was looking down on someone. A woman, completely broken and on her knees, her red hair falling over one shoulder. It was Nabooru, he remembered… wasn't that her name? He'd met her when he was younger, when things hadn't been so confused and Ganon didn't have the triforce yet.

She was kneeling in front of two enormously old crones, who cackled with glee as they glanced at each other.

"Shall we put you against the Hero of Time?" one of the asked.

"Yes, Ganondorf His Highness would enjoy that!" Another squealed.

"I don't care anymore," Nabooru said in a dead voice.

Now he was looking down upon the front of the desert. He was on top of the entryway to the temple, standing on a giant stone figure, and dressed in his Sheikah clothes. Wow, did that feel good. Familiar… comforting in a way.

But even moreso when he recognized the figure…

Link. Gods, it was Link, and he was looking towards the yawning entrance of the temple confusedly.

Sheik took an easy leap from the top of the building to the sands below. His wrist wasn't bound in this dream, it was perfectly functional, and he braced it against the sand before drawing up to his full height. He actually relished Link's look of surprise, then confusion, then excitement. "Sheik!" he exclaimed, dropping the Master Sword and throwing his arms around him. Sheik returned the embrace as if it were a lifeline, fighting back tears that he knew were coming.

"Where've you been? I waited at the graveyard, but…"

"Link, I've been captured. I'm in His castle… I think I'm dreaming."

"But how is that possible?"

"Don't think about it. Look, I was thinking of something. There's no way you can get into the temple now. It's too sealed up for you to get in. You have to go back to the temple of Time, and become a kid again, like you did in Kakariko. Do you remember?"

"I do, but…" His aquamarine eyes burned with unasked questions.

"Time's like a river. You can take it backwards or forwards, but going back in time is a little harder. Make sure you—Damn. You won't be able to get into the fortress without…"

He felt around. Ah, his harp! It was still there beneath the folds of cloth, strung with golden strings and emblazoned with the Royal Seal… Zelda's harp… he took a moment to stare at it, wondering if it was really there. Of course it wasn't. This was a dream. His harp was broken, or thrown away, taken by Ganon and left somewhere. Just like his Sheikah clothing.

The song took shorter than usual. Both of them were excited. This was the last temple, the last fortress to conquer and then… and then…

"Sheik, what… what's he doing to you? He hasn't hurt you, has he?"

Sheik half-turned away from Link and closed his eyes, massaging his temples with one hand thoughtfully. It was a long pause.

"No, Link."

The look of relief on the Hero's face was unmistakable.

"I swear to Nayru when I get my sword against him…" Link began.

"You mustn't let anger rule you. We'll see each other soon."

Link closed the distance between them, put one hand on the side of Sheik's face. "No, I won't, I know. But if he did anything to you… if he… I don't know what I'd…" he broke halfway through the sentence and replaced words with a kiss.

This was heaven.

After a solid minute, Sheik had to breathe, because he couldn't think clearly for once. All of a sudden reality swept in and he pushed Link hard, away from him. The Hero, caught off guard, went sprawling into the sand.

The desert wind picked up, carrying even more sands with it until they blocked out the sun in a tempesting swirl of a breeze. "Wait, Sheik! I—" Link shouted above the commotion.

The sand cleared. Sheik was gone.