fleets: last night I made the terrible decision to write at 2 in the morning. This chapter is what was supposed to go with the first chapter, but because it was late at night and I wasn't making good decisions, it didn't get uploaded.

It was wonderful hearing from people so soon! Hello again everyone :) I missed you all!

Chapter 2: Fuu

The rest of the morning had been a chaotic one for Sheik, and he wasn't able to catch up on as much sleep as he'd wanted. As soon as they'd heard the news about Fuu, the Gerudo witches, Koume and Kotake, had wanted to speak to Sheik about him. For the most part, it seemed like they had simply wanted to berate Sheik for not believing that their ritual would succeed (in that annoying, disapproving, crony way), and spent the better hour congratulating each other on how they were unequaled in witchcraft. Afterwards, he'd had to speak with Impa regarding their next plans, now that they were a little more convinced that Fuu wasn't an immediate threat.

Lunch hour came too soon, and Sheik found himself having to visit Fuu once again to make sure he would get lunch. Sheik found Fuu lying on the bedding where he'd left him earlier, but it seemed like he'd been awake for the past hour or so. Sheik was tense again, and to be honest it was hard not to be, even though Fuu was no longer Vaati. When he'd first stepped into the tent to see how the former sorcerer was doing, his breath had caught in his throat at the sight of the young man of pale complexion. Fuu's eyes had been open with a glint of resolve that was different than the confused, apologetic one that he had encountered earlier in the morning. Fuu's calculated, piercing gaze warmed when he noticed Sheik standing by the entrance again. "Sheik, right? My memory is still a little fuzzy," Fuu laughed, and Sheik was momentarily disturbed by how friendly the once-cold individual seemed to be. "So what's the news, can you take these off now?" he asked, holding up the chains that restricted him as he lay on the ground lazily.

"No," Sheik said, perhaps a little too quickly. He caught his mistake when Fuu's friendly, expectant smile dipped into a slight frown. It was a difficult balance to treat Fuu like an ally when he had been such a terrifying enemy not so long ago. That demented, vicious smile, and the chilling laugh of the sorcerer of winds was still etched Sheik's memory. The smell of fire, the smoke stinging his eyes, the screaming…

"It's ok, I know why I have to keep these on."

Fuu's voice brought Sheik back to the present time, though Sheik wasn't sure if he'd left one nightmare in the place of a new one. The other teen sat up, this time without any indication that his headache remained. "I would do the same to someone so unpredictable. You don't know if I would go out and suddenly start murdering everyone, right?"

This is Fuu, not Vaati. Fuu, not Vaati, Sheik repeated over and over in his head.

"What, you look like a poe possessed me or something," Fuu laughed nervously. "Did I say something wrong? That was supposed to be a joke." Fuu sighed. "Perhaps a joke in bad taste."

Calm down. Calm. Sheik took a deep breath. Fuu was, of course, referring to Sheik's story earlier that he'd been restrained because he'd gone on a rampage from mental trauma; he wasn't referring to the fact that he was actually Vaati. Fuu didn't know that anymore. I have to stop thinking of him as the wind mage. Sheik wordlessly sat down next to Fuu and then passed the other boy a sandwich. They weren't going to have Fuu walking around the dining areas freely just yet.

"I was that bad, huh," Fuu continued as Sheik passed his lunch to him.

This question, Sheik could answer truthfully. "Yes." Awful. Horrible. The villages reduced to burning rubble, the dead littering the fields and painting the grass red, the thundering sky… and in the middle of it all was a pale-skinned youth with the most chilling grin. 'Surrender, Princess,' he'd mouthed.

"I guess Vaati left me with a scar, huh. Well at least we got him good."

We sure did. Sheik thought. He had half a mind to leave now that he'd done what he'd come here to do: give Fuu some food so he didn't starve. Still the other seemed to want to talk. From the occasional encounters he'd had with Vaati in the past, he vaguely recalled that the sorcerer had been extremely talkative. He just loved the sound of his own voice. At least that trait didn't disappear when Vaati turned into Fuu, he thought grudgingly.

"What was the battle like?" he asked. Then, he asked somewhat sheepishly, "What were his last moments like?"

"Who?" Sheik asked, even though he knew the answer.

"Vaati. How did he die? You were there, weren't you?"

"Yes."

Fuu bit his sandwich uncomfortably from the somewhat awkward pause. "If you don't want to talk about it then-" he started, somewhat irritably, but was cut off by the Sheikah.

"No I… forgive me. I didn't know where to begin," Sheik said apologetically. I don't know how to hold a conversation with you when I know who you once were. For the first time, Fuu flashed a questioning look, as though suspicious of Sheik's guarded behavior since the moment they'd met, but said nothing. The shadow warrior looked lost in thought for a few seconds, and then began, "We were an army of about one thousand strong, Gerudos, Gorons, and Hylians together. It was to be the final battle to defeat Vaati. The princess had lured him into a trap: he hadn't expected Hyrule to have the assistance of the Gerudo witches, and he'd become arrogant after the hero had been injured. Our armies clashed, hundreds died. Our plan was to protect the princess until she could unleash the holy arrow, with Twinrova being key to combat Vaati's magic for just long enough." Sheik closed his eyes, reliving the battle. Fuu listened intently, respectfully keeping his mouth shut for once as he didn't want to miss a single word of the story. "The plan had worked." When Sheik opened his eyes again, he had a thoughtful, leery look. "It had worked almost too well. Before the princess had done anything, Vaati had collapsed in the middle of battle. I'm not sure how many noticed in the chaos of battle, but I saw it. The sorcerer was in his demon form, a floating black eye with red pupils burning with hatred. He'd been about to attack the bulk of the army with something devastating, but just before he could do so, something had attacked him first. Perhaps I had imagined it, but I thought I saw a flicker of a shadow hover through the smoke, and strike at the demon like a snake. In that moment, Vaati faltered, and in his hesitation he was hit by the princess's arrow." Sheik glanced at Fuu briefly before looking away again. "Vaati will no longer terrorize us ever again."

"And what about me? You don't think the thing that attacked Vaati was me, do you?"

Sheik couldn't help but raise a skeptical eyebrow at Fuu's sudden, eager question. The teen was looking up at him with an inspired glimmer that was positively beaming. "I… don't remember where you were in that fight. You were protecting the princess," Sheik added somewhat sternly, "as all of us Sheikah are ordained to do."

"Well I'd like to think that I made the decisive blow against Vaati, the one that helped end the battle," Fuu grinned. He took a bite out of the sandwich, and then leaned back again, looking upwards with a wistful expression. "Heh, I defeated Vaati, the Sorcerer of Winds. I defeated the strongest sorcerer in the world." Fuu winked, "That means I'm the best."

"We don't really know what it was that attacked Vaati and it is highly unlikely that it was you," Sheik said, his composure breaking somewhat as exasperation crept in.

"How do you know?"

"I just do," Sheik snapped.

"Huh, so you do have emotions. For a second I was afraid you were an Armos statue."

And that was when Sheik lost his voice for a moment. He could feel his cheeks go red, and he was glad that half of his face was covered by a cloth, though Fuu's cheeky grin suggested that it still didn't hide his reddening ears. He opened his mouth to retort, but couldn't find anything to say to the youth who was chewing on the rest of his sandwich in a gloating sort of way. This… this little BRAT is definitely not Vaati. Vaati was… Vaati was…

What had Vaati really been like?

Not like this guy, Sheik thought to himself. As Sheik fumed in the corner, half in genuine annoyance and half in embarrassment, Fuu brushed the breadcrumbs off of his fingers and shrugged his shoulders. "I'm glad, really," he began, and Sheik was somewhat taken aback by the sincerity in the other's voice, "I feel like you were really angry at me since I first woke up, but you kept hiding it. That was the first time you showed annoyance," Fuu smiled, "the first time you were honest with me."

Sheik didn't know what to say, so he didn't say anything, shocked beyond words now. For a brief moment he felt the urge to apologize. It felt dirty, almost, to be thanked for honesty when Fuu's entire existence was one big lie. But he didn't apologize. He didn't owe Vaati of all people an apology for being dishonest. Who is Vaati?

Who is Fuu?

"We'll come get you in a few hours," Sheik said curtly, standing up. It was obvious he wanted to leave the tent now, away from Fuu. "We'll be escorting the princess back to Hyrule Castle. We don't know how many monsters are wandering the roads right now, but we'll want to be leaving soon before it gets dark again."

Fuu scowled, and grumbled sarcastically, "Guess I'll just sit here with my chains again, then."

"I'll unchain you later." Sheik said as he left the tent, "You have my word."

Besides, they couldn't keep him locked up like that forever.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Later that day, they readied the caravans that would take them back to Hyrule. The decoy Princess Zelda was ushered into the center cart along with a few guards. Sheik and Impa were the only ones who were aware that this Zelda was not the real one, and the decoy played her part well. Impa took the caravan directly in front of the decoy's and Sheik accompanied Fuu in the one behind it. There weren't many people accompanying the caravan: there had only been a small group to make the trek to the Gerudo Valley after the battle, and the rest had left for Hyrule Castle proper earlier. This was fine, Sheik reassured Fuu, because without a leader the monsters had dispersed. Impa and Sheik, along with a few extra guards, were more than enough to handle anything they might encounter on the roads.

After unchaining him, Sheik had tossed Fuu a change of clothes. "It's my spare. Wear it for now," he'd said. The spare clothes fit Fuu almost perfectly, since he and Sheik were almost the same height, but there was some room around the shoulders and arms: Fuu did have gangly limbs. Fuu wondered briefly about where his own clothes had gone, but Sheik waved the question away as irrelevant.

Still, even though Fuu didn't quite have the physical build to pass as one of the shadow warriors, his appearance was extremely convincing. His eyes were red like Impa's, and his hair, which they'd tied back in a similar braded fashion as Sheik's, was naturally pale like Impa's. Once his face was covered by a cloth so that his occasionally confused expression was hidden, he looked exactly like what people expected a Sheikah to look like.

Sheik noticed that Fuu had an extremely sharp eye for noticing subtleties, and once again he surprised him by noting Sheik's usually unreadable expression. "You're impressed?" Fuu asked.

"It fits you well," Sheik agreed. "Surprisingly."

Fuu, appearing pleased, made his way to the caravan he was assigned to, but then suddenly stopped short, causing Sheik to nearly run into him. He took a step backwards again, and then pointed at the person getting on the cart in front of them. "Is that the princess?" he asked.

He was pointing towards the woman in a light pink dress who was being helped into the cart by Impa. She held up a gloved hand to her lips, laughing about something Impa had said. The decoy was doing an impeccable job playing her part: her bright smile to the small mannerisms like the way she absentmindedly brushed her hair when she laughed, everything was on point like how the real Princess Zelda would behave. Sheik tried not to look too envious and motioned for Fuu to hurry up into the caravan. "Yes that is her," he said, "and our duty is to do everything in our power to keep her from harm."

Fuu ignored Sheik for a few more seconds, watching the decoy until she disappeared into the caravan.

"You seem awfully fixated on the princess," Sheik noted, when Fuu was taking too long. He wondered, briefly, if Vaati's obsession with Princess Zelda was still lurking somewhere in this new personality's head. Sheik shuddered at the thought, and then climbed into the cart, sitting across from Fuu who seemed lost in thought after the encounter with the decoy.

"Yes," Fuu admitted, after they had settled into their seats for the long journey back to the castle. "Well, no. It's hard to explain," he said.

Sheik waited for the other to continue, although somewhat guardedly.

Meanwhile, Fuu scratched his head, puzzled. "It's like I expected her to be more. She was dull. Uninteresting."

"Yes, well, the stories get carried away. There's no such thing as a person who literally shines like the sun and blinds the unworthy with beauty," Sheik muttered with a bit of barely noticeable bitterness. He caught Fuu staring at him in surprise, and he furrowed his brows in response as a silent "What?"

"You surprise me," Fuu said after a while. He was smiling, and Sheik could have sworn that with every smile, Fuu's expression became increasingly devious. Maybe he was finally settling into a personality after his head had been scrambled by Twinrova. He just hoped that it was a personality that wasn't… dangerous. "I expected you to defend the princess, not agree with me."

Sheik scowled. "I'm not agreeing with you, I'm just saying the stories are ridiculous."

Fuu shrugged. "I think it's a shame," he said as he made himself comfortable on the cushions inside the caravan, "To be honest, I think you fit the image I had of the princess much better."

Again, with that devious grin. Sheik had never imagined that Fuu would be so perceptive; they hadn't spent a day together and already he was making suggestions that were much too close to the truth.

Sheik had known keeping Vaati 'leashed' was going to be difficult, but perhaps they'd underestimated just how difficult.

"You're not going to ask me why?" Fuu pressed.

"I'm not interested," Sheik said bluntly.

"How boring," Fuu sighed, resting his chin against his hands disappointedly.

Just then, the horses stirred as the coach drivers ushered them to start the journey. The caravans lurched forward, and Sheik was thankful for the momentary distraction. After all, he was stuck, alone with Fuu, for the next few hours before they arrived back at the castle. While there were usually more than two people occupying a caravan, they weren't ready to let Fuu talk to other people as he pleased just yet. No, not until they were absolutely sure that he was as safe as Twinrova assured them he would be.

Sheik didn't know how long it had taken until he'd fallen asleep, or when he had fallen asleep. Not getting any rest the night before had finally taken its toll, along with the stress he'd had for most of the morning. It wasn't a very good sleep, since he'd woken from time to time to keep an eye out on what Fuu was doing. The newly accredited Sheikah, however, seemed to be interested in watching the scenery outside rather than to cause trouble. Fuu seemed especially keen whenever they passed one of the desolate skeletons of a ravaged village, the aftermath of Vaati's terror. Sheik half-expected Fuu to bother him again with more questions, but the teen kept his quiet, pondering the view on his own.

Just when Sheik finally allowed himself to rest, however, a hand shook him urgently by the shoulders. Reflexively, Sheik's swift fingers shot towards his knife and with lightning precision, pressed a blade against Fuu's neck.

"Out there," Fuu said, his eyes wandering towards the knife at his neck.

Just as quickly, the knife vanished, and Sheik looked out towards where Fuu was pointing. He could hardly believe what he was seeing: at least two dozen monsters were closing in on them in a way that was unusually organized. "A raiding party?" Sheik hissed in disbelief, "but that's impossible. Monsters never get organized like that without a true leader, and we just defeated Vaati." They weren't prepared for this kind of raid. The most resistance they'd expected on the road was two or three monsters wandering about. A dark cloud was rushing towards them swiftly, and Sheik could make out black-furred wolves that were as large as a small horse. On their backs were crooked-backed, leather skinned creatures with large, hooked noses. Bokoblin wolfos riders.

"I'll protect the princess. Stay here, and hide if you have to," Sheik ordered.

"Hide? But aren't I a Shei-"

"Stay here." Sheik repeated sternly. He was about to leave, but then stopped. He seemed to struggle against an internal argument, and then with a somewhat defeated groan he tossed an object towards Fuu.

Fuu grabbed it and studied the item in his hands. It was a knife.

"Use it only if you have to," Sheik stressed. As he vanished from the caravan, leaving Fuu all alone, he prayed that he hadn't made a mistake just now. Fuu was now alone, unsupervised, free, and worst of all, armed. Only one day has passed and this is already a mess, he thought. This will be a real test to see if Vaati is truly on our side.

fleets: I have a confession to make - I have never played any game with Sheik in it, so I may get characterizations wrong. I'm trying my best with the zeldawiki resources though, and some rumors I've heard here and there. Apologies if my characterizations become "off."

I'm still trying to figure out 'Fuu's' personality right now. Fuu is, too. I hope I'll be better about developing him as the story progresses.

Spartan Yoshi 90: And I'm super duper excited to see such a warm welcome from everyone. Thank you so much!

Cheza the Flower Maiden: Aw thank you so much! I hope I can finish this, especially since I hate leaving things unfinished. I'm really thankful for the no-pressure sentiment though, sincerely thank you! :)

Flufux: Hahaha hi again Flufux. I honestly did not expect to talk to people through Author's Notes again (I'd been so ready to toss in the towel for fanfic writing, and yet here I am again. I must be a masochist :P ). It was such a pleasant surprise to see a response from people so soon! Also congratulations on finishing your first story! That's an amazing accomplishment, one definitely to be proud of :D I'm sorry to say I haven't really been reading stories lately (I don't really remember the last time I read one...), but it sounds like you have some great ideas with Dethl! Dethl is such an underrated character.

AquilaMage: Hi again, and thank you! I felt incredibly silly coming back after I'd been so convinced that I was done... I guess you can't really know what you'll get yourself into in the future huh? Haha yeah, Vaati's a little weird, isn't he? I felt really weird writing him as such a friendly character this time around since that's not what I was used to (did a double take a few times. Sheik's a little confused, too). We'll see more of the Vaati I'm used to writing, don't you worry :3

Serpent Tailed Angel: And I'm super psyched to hear from you! Ugh what have I gotten myself into again... At the same time, I'm pretty excited to be back at it again. I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss the sleepless nights and thinking about Vaati's adventures 24/7... er, what I meant is I am enjoying writing fan stories again.

Sorceress V: Hi again Sorceress V, always nice to hear from you! Haha no, no rampages from him. Yet. :P

SubZeroChimera: Hey thanks! :D ... Wait really? Nintendo is remembering Vaati? When?! I thought they'd given up on him completely! :O