So, I managed to squeeze this in between the work of real life, but be warned- I'm about to get insanely busy very soon, so I'm afraid I won't be able to update for a while. Possibly months. I apologize in advance for the longer wait!
HUGE THANKS to ultima-owner, grandshadowseal, and alemery for reviewing! Enjoy the chapter! And please let me know what you think, because the feedback really does help me improve. Thanks!
Disclaimer: If I owned Legend of Zelda, this would have been a game released as an alternate version of Twilight Princess. Given that it's not...
Vaati wrinkled his brow. "So… you think that Wardmaster Eklipse is my father," he stated, slow and deliberate. "And… you think that Captain Duske is Shadow and Dark's father. Which would make us cousins and all half-Sheikah."
Midna nodded, grinning smugly. Then she giggled, cunning and mischievously satisfied at having caught us off-guard. I mentally cursed her to an eternity of starvation and thirst in the Gerudo Desert. "Exactly," she confirmed. "Honestly, I don't know how you all didn't notice- it's not as if none of you don't look alike. After all, who else has purple hair?"
"But simply that alone doesn't prove anything!" Dark argued. "That could just be coincidence. After all, half the people in the kingdom have brown hair, and they're not all related!"
"Red eyes," I put in before I could stop myself. "You both have red eyes. Sheikah eyes."
"You don't, though," Dark countered, rounding on me. "If Captain Duske is supposedly our father, then why are your eyes blue?"
"A recessive gene," Midna explained as she chimed in. "That happens sometimes. If both your parents had blue-eyed ancestors, or your mother had blue eyes or something, then that trait could show up in you."
"But Dark got the supposedly Sheikah eyes. How does that work?" Vaati asked, one eyebrow raised.
Midna shrugged. "It doesn't always happen. Chances are, Shadow just got lucky enough to have blue eyes. Doesn't mean those two aren't your fathers. And, besides, they were at Castle Town a little less than a year before you all were born. Remember? They mentioned that they'd been there twice, so the timing works out. One visit made Dark, the other made Shadow and Vaati."
My brothers paused at this. "Well, the chances seem pretty unlikely," Vaati tentatively offered. But he was wavering, I could see. Somewhere inside, I suspected, he wanted Wardmaster Eklipse to be his father. He wanted to have a parent, a guardian, something that we'd all wished for when we were young.
Dark was the same, I knew. His expression appeared taut, like he was warring between two separate desires. Logic and hope. Reality and dreams. "The odds of us simply finding them, though, as easy as that… it's an insane piece of luck."
Midna flashed a fanged grin. "Well," she giggled, "maybe some things were just meant to happen."
Blue. Red. Green. Vio. Blond hair, blue eyes, tanned skin. But subtle differences, still. Red's more childish, with wider eyes and a rounder face. Blue is stubborn, with broader shoulders and a more powerful form. Green is balanced, somewhere in-between with the appearance of a knight. And Vio… Vio is slender, quick and nimble with an archer's gaze. Narrower eyes, confidence exuding… most like me.
I stood before the mirror that hung in the house's small washroom, cycling through the forms of my- other halves? Parts of me? I wasn't quite sure what to call them. The Links, I suppose, was what they had defined themselves as. But I was the only one left now, so what did that make me? A fifth of a person? Or I was a whole self all my own now? I didn't know.
Green. Red. Blue. Back to Vio. Then, just for the fun of it-
"Hey, I know we might be half Sheikah, but I didn't mean it like that!" Dark exclaimed as he walked in just in time to see my eyes bleed red and my outfit change to the traditional white and blue.
I reverted back to normal as I turned to face him. "Eh, I was just trying it out," I replied with a shrug. "It's odd to look and see that, more so than usual."
"Why?" my brother asked.
"Because," I answered, "usually when I change faces, it's into another one of the Links I was the Shadow of. Then, at least, we look mostly the same, just different hair and clothing colors. But as a Sheikah, it's completely different."
Dark made a noise of comprehension. "Ah. Oh, and by the way, I was wondering, how did you know?"
I glanced at him sideways, a tad bit confused. "Know what?"
"That they were our fathers. You suspected, even before Midna said anything, right? So how did you know?"
I shrugged, turning back to the mirror as I idly cycled through the Links again. "I learned how to watch people, to observe them and see all the little nuances in how they look, move, act. It's how I utilize this disguise ability of mine most effectively. I need to be able to become them, not just in appearance but in mannerisms and behavior as well. So, because of that, I notice a lot. Remember how I used to spent hours at a time just sitting up somewhere high and watching the people? You pick up a lot that way."
Dark blinked. "Huh. I never understood why you did that, but it does make sense."
I nodded, letting myself bleed back into my original form. "Yeah. But… oh." I paused as a sudden thought struck me. "They don't know, do they?"
"Who doesn't know what?" Vaati asked, appearing in a swirl of wind. I nearly jumped out of my skin when he came out of nowhere, cherry bombs between my fingers and a curse (not the magical kind) on my lips.
"Great Goddesses, don't do that!" Dark yelped, going intangible on instinct as he leapt halfway through the wall.
Vaati snickered. "Alright, this teleportation thing is gonna be awesome. But anyway, who doesn't know what?"
I tilted my head to the side a bit, confused. "What are you…?"
The Wind Mage rolled his eyes. "You said it earlier. 'They don't know, do they?' I'm assuming that 'they' is referring to the Captain and Wardmaster?" he prompted.
"Oh, yeah," I remembered. "I mean, they probably don't know that they might be our fathers. We might be their sons. Um… should we tell them, or try to confirm it first? Or, how would we even do that? I doubt we'd be on the family tree or anything."
Dark shrugged. "Magic?" he suggested, turning to Vaati. "Can you do that?"
Vaati hesitated before answering. "I believe so, yes… but, quite honestly, I would have no idea how. It's not exactly the type of magic I normally study."
I snuffed out the fuses of the cherry bombs before they burned down and tossed them idly from hand to hand. "But could you figure it out?" I asked. "I mean, this kind of information... it's probably best to present with proof, right?"
"Yes, otherwise they'd probably dismiss us as delusional or something," Dark agreed. "It does sound pretty farfetched when you think about it. We don't even know if they really are... y'know... or not, anyway."
Vaati nodded. "I probably could, but I think I'd need my lab and my library," he told us. "And preferably blood samples from them, too. Blood calls to blood, after all. It's one of the fundamental rules of magic."
Our older brother frowned. "Ah. That could be a problem, then."
"What could be a problem?" Link interjected as he entered the room. Midna floated a little behind him, expression oddly pensive.
"Confirming whether or not the Captain and Wardmaster actually are our fathers, or if this whole thing is just one big coincidence," Dark explained.
"Yeah, that does seem like a good thing to check first," Link chuckled wryly. "It would be a bit awkward to say, 'Hello, we might be your long-lost sons' and then realize that you weren't related after all."
Gee, ya think? I thought sarcastically as I slipped the cherry bombs into my pocket. Aloud, I told him, "Which is why we're doing it. Problem is, we need blood samples, and I hardly think they're going to just let us take some."
"Mm, probably not. Blood's powerful stuff when it comes to magic. You can do a lot of great things with it... but also some of the darkest spells imaginable. There's a reason many curses and dark rituals require sacrifices, after all," Midna chipped in. It looked as if she had snapped out of her thoughts, or had at least put them aside for later.
We all dwelled on that for a moment. Then Link shook himself (as in, literally shook himself- maybe we were spending too much time on four paws) and swiftly changed the subject.
"Well, possible heritage aside," he said, "negotiations are going well. I think. At least that's what Midna tells me, since she can understand politics better than I can. I think they'll help, though. Hopefully."
"That's good," Dark commented. "At least we know we didn't come all the way up here for nothing."
Vaati nodded his agreement. Something about Link caught my eye, though... because, for whatever reason, he suddenly looked quite nervous.
Sure enough, Link cleared his throat and continued. "There's more though. The Elders want to meet you. Something about, uh... 'confirming your true intentions and origins', I think. They asked me all these questions about you guys, too, just before the meeting ended. Do you think this is about...?" the Hero trailed off meaningfully.
My brothers and I exchanged looks. Oh. That... did not sound promising.
Even though I'm fairly sure they were all either my height or shorter, the Sheikah Elders somehow managed to make me feel very, very, small.
Maybe it was their sharp gazes, calculating and appearing to see far more than one would think. Perhaps it was the way the shadows in the room almost looked darker, shifting and coalescing in unnatural movements. Normally, the shadows were our friends, our protection, our disguise and our cloak- but this time they were under the control of another, and that was downright unnerving.
Alright, I guess this is what it feels like when Dark comes out of nowhere to spook people, I thought. Then, as multiple sets of crimson eyes gleamed from their position half-shrouded in darkness, I added to myself, Oh, that's so weird to see on other people.
The Elders were sitting cross-legged on a collection of woven cushions, arrayed in an arc on the floor. We sat in front of them, Dark placing himself protectively between and a little in front of Vaati and I. From the set of his shoulders and the expressionless mask he wore I could tell he was very tense, instincts nervous and on edge. Dark's entire form was poised to spring to his feet at any moment, prepared to fight or flee if necessary.
Vaati and I were no different. There was a hint more breeze in the room than was natural, a touch of air that swirled through the corners in gentle eddies. My fingers were splayed out on my thighs, forcibly held still as they itched to reach for the cherry bombs I still had tucked away in my pockets.
Thus far, the other Sheikah we'd met had been relatively friendly. Initial conflict aside, they were like anyone else on the street once it really came down to it- just, y'know, with the skills of a high-grade assassin. These Elders, on the other hand…
I couldn't read their facial expressions, but the impression I got was that most of them were hovering between suspicion, hostility, and outright dislike.
Well, to be fair, we were expecting that, I mused internally. I doubt any of us exactly endeared ourselves to them in our past lives. We were the villains, after all.
And even if we've all turned over new leaves now- or, well, mostly, anyway -I don't think they've forgotten what we once were.
At length, the oldest woman in the center of the arc, directly in front of Dark and yet the farthest away from us, opened the meeting with a raspy cough. After clearing her throat, she addressed us each individually.
"The Darkened Hero," she called Dark. "The Lonely Shadow," she told me. "The Fallen Picori," she named Vaati. "It has been many a year since you last walked these lands."
My brothers and I stiffened minutely. Well, the titles had been unexpected. I suppressed the urge to flinch at mine, a reminder of all the hurt and the pain and the sense of exclusion that had driven me in my past life.
(You're not one of them. You're just a failure, a copy, a broken-mirror image. You will always lag behind, always lurk on the outskirts but never come in.)
My hands curled into fists, nails digging little crescents into my palms. Three simple words. Three simple, simple words. Why did they hurt so much? It didn't make sense, but they did, and I could tell that they were affecting my brothers just as much as they were affecting me.
Dark was the one to break the tension-filled hush that had fallen. "I'm afraid," he tersely informed the Elders, "that those names are no longer applicable. We are not defined by our creators or our species any longer." His teeth flashed in what looked like it was supposed to be a brittle smile but really seemed more like he was baring his fangs. "We were given a second chance. We took it. And we did not waste it." He drew himself up, back straightening and eyes flashing. "Our past selves are no longer all we are."
Another woman three cushions to the left inclined her head in acknowledgement. "Then," she inquired carefully, "Who are you now?"
Vaati was the one to answer. "We are brothers," he declared. "We are children of the alleyways and the underworld of Castle Town. We are of Hyrule, and we are protectors of our kingdom."
"We may be thieves," I continued, because somehow I got the sense that our response was really quite important and that it was going to define our entire relationship with the Sheikah Tribe, "but we have honor- however little there may be. We may have once been villains, but we are not evil. We were never truly evil."
Silence fell, stretching long between us. The Elders appeared to consider our words, eerie gazes boring into us as they stared. Then, a particularly tall man inclined his head and murmured, "So. It would seem that Lady Impaz was not exaggerating when she said that we would be… surprised by how well the Goddesses' latest gamble has played out. Three rebirths, three new lives, three old souls in youth-young bodies.
"You traverse a narrow path," the Elder cautioned. "There were many ways for you to fall again, to descend back into the evils you were sprung from. It appears, however, that you have all managed to redeem yourselves. Your second chance has not been wasted."
I'd certainly hope not, I thought to myself. We've done so much, come so far… and we're not stupid. We got another shot at life, and we weren't dumb enough to ruin it. Besides… I hope, by the time our adventure is done, it will be enough.
I hope that, by the end of this, the Links- Vio, Green, Blue, Red -if they could see me now, they would not regret calling me one of them.
Vaati dipped his chin in a tiny nod. "Thank you," he murmured, quiet and humble. The glint in his eye, however, told me that he was wary. He still wasn't sure why this meeting had been called, and until he did, he was going to play his cards close to his chest.
A cloak rustled somewhere in the background. Dark cloth fluttered, as the ancient Sheikah shifted in their seats. One of them leaned forwards a bit, face coming half out of the shadows to reveal wrinkled skin tattooed with sweeping lines and an elegant tear.
"Reborn through magic you all may be," she began, words smooth like the waters over a pebble in a stream, "but you all contain the Sheikah blood. That, it seems, has remained."
Dark's jaw clenched ever so slightly. Was she referring to what I thought she was referring to? Maybe. Perhaps. Did they know? Was it real? Suspicions formed within my mind, queries about the true nature of this meeting. Why were we really there?
It wasn't until Vaati twisted to shoot me a distinctly unimpressed look that seemed to say, Nice going, O blunt one, that I realized I'd said that aloud.
...Whoops.
Luckily, the Elders seemed to find this more amusing than anything else. "Ah," one man rumbled, "I can truly see the beings of the Four Sword within you, after all. You were only ever one piece of a whole," he addressed me, "and it seems that you have brought a little bit of your other parts with you."
I blinked. Thought over what I'd just said. And I realized- that wasn't me, Shadow, talking. That was Blue.
Huh. Perhaps I had always been more of a Link than I'd thought.
That same Elder kept speaking, an undercurrent of humor beneath his voice. "Well, that is besides the point. As you have likely gathered, we did not call you three here merely to discuss what you once were and what you have become. We said that you all are of Sheikah blood, although… have you truly realized to what extent?"
Ah. So they did know. I wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
Dark raised one black eyebrow. "It depends. What exactly are you referring to?"
There was a throaty chuckle from one of the women. "Oh, don't play the fool, now," she told us with a smirk. "If you haven't figured it out even after you spent all that time with them before, then your powers of observation are sorely lacking."
"Lady Nyte!" someone else hissed reprovingly, so soft I barely caught it.
The Elder, Lady Nyte, rolled her eyes and scoffed. It was a remarkably normal action to see, so out of place in this room of living shadows and mystery. "What?" she laughed, gesturing to us. "Don't tell me it isn't obvious. For Goddesses' sake, they're not stupid."
Funny, that's exactly what I was thinking.
The very first Elder who had spoken at the beginning of the meeting made herself known once more, neatly cutting off a second rebuke with, "Be as that may, we must confirm things." Switching her attention to my brothers and I, she addressed us and asked, "Were you aware of your true heritage?"
"We had suspected, yes," Dark admitted after a slight hesitation. "But there was no real proof…"
Again, Lady Nyte scoffed. I got the feeling that the other Elders were glaring at her, somehow. She seemed very different from the rest of them. "Oh, you're theirs, alright," she assured us with what I could have sworn was an absolutely gleeful cackle. "You look just like them when they were your ages."
A niggling thought grew in the back of my mind. She sounded like she knew them well, and had for a long time. What was her relation to our fathers?
(And d***, but wasn't that a weird thought. Father. We had… parents. Or one parent. Whatever, close enough.)
Wow.
Vaati had been thinking the same thing, and started to voice his thoughts- but before he got past the first syllable, Lady Nyte cut him off.
"Before you ask," she said with a grin, "I've known them ever since they were born. How could I not?" She stood, stepping forwards into the dim light as the other Sheikah Elders shifted again like a flock of bats rustling their wings behind her. Then Lady Nyte lowered her hood, revealing a bun of hair colored a faded yet still dark purple. A mischievous spark burned within her eyes, and her smirk widened. Then she squared her shoulders, looked down at us, and spoke. "Hello, grandchildren."
My every thought skidded to a halt, crashing into each other in a jumbled heap. I dimly registered my jaw falling open, gaping wider than a hungry deku baba.
Wait, what?!
The meeting closed soon after, but I was still unable to muster up a single coherent thought. So my brothers and I stumbled out in a shell-shocked daze, nearly tripping down the stairs as we wandered into the shadow of a nearby building to regroup. Link, who had been waiting outside, stared at us in obvious worry when we brushed right past him on the way out.
"Are you guys okay?" he asked in a worried tone, following us. "Because you look kind of…" he waved his hand in a vague very-much-not-okay motion.
Midna popped out of his shadow and shook her head, tongue clucking sympathetically. "Ouch. So, it's confirmed, then?"
We could only nod our heads dumbly. Her words had barely penetrated the hazy fog that seemed to have filled my brain with mush, leaving me incapable to doing little more than staring at the wall and trying to equate Father plus Grandmother equals familymyfamilywhat.
Seriously. Just… what.
Beside me, Vaati made an indecipherable noise that sounded a bit like a squeak mixed with a groan. Dark leaned against the wall, one arm flopped over his eyes as he pulled his cloak tighter around himself. I closed my eyes as I shuffled closer to Dark, leaning into his shoulder. Vaati pressed himself up against his other side, just like when we were younger and we all had to huddle in the winter to conserve heat. Before we met Telma, who let us into the bar on the coldest nights and gave us a blanket by the fire when all her rooms were full.
Footsteps brushed over the ground, deliberately telegraphed with sound. Two sets. Adults. And-
"Oh, hello. Are you alright?" questioned Wardmaster Eklipse, sounding concerned.
Lighter footsteps shuffled over, followed by a cheery laugh. "Ah, don't worry about them. They're just a bit… surprised, is all."
I heard a gusty sigh, and cracked open one eye to see the Captain wearing an utterly resigned expression that was so much like Dark's whenever we roped him into a particularly crazy scheme. "Mother," he sighed again, voice full long-suffering forbearance, "what did you do this time?"
Lady Nyte cackled like a witch from a fairytale. "My sons," she answered, "meet your sons. Not the blond one, the rest of them. I'm sure you can tell whose are whose."
The Captain and Wardmaster let out identical strangled "Erk?!" sounds. Their mother (our grandmother, holy s***) chortled with altogether far too much self-satisfied glee.
