"I'm sorry that you still feel that way," said Sheik, closing the door behind them. "Have you talked to anyone about that?"
Link left the logs next to the burning heart.
"Sheik, I'm fine. It's nothing to talk about," he said.
"It IS something to talk about. You haven't gotten past the battle with Ganondorf, and pushing all your emotions to one day isn't healthy."
"Maybe, but it's not like my life as a whole is healthy," said Link, almost smiling. "It's really nothing Sheik, please don't worry. You always worry too much about me."
He patted Sheik's shoulder, and Sheik noticed that he was taller than he had been during the war.
'Of course I worried about you. You were our only hope. If you died, we were all dead. I had to cling to a ten year old in an overgrown body as our only hope for salvation."
Sheik punched him lightly in the chest. "You sometimes test my patience, hero," he said, and turned his back on him.
"What? I haven't done anything. You're even more of a worrywart than before," said Link. "Can't we think of it as a celebration?"
"It doesn't matter what I think of it. I can't remember any of it," said Sheik, sitting down at the table. He was getting angrier and angrier, but he didn't want to take it out on Link.
Link sat down in front of him and started serving a couple cups of tea. His expression back to the expressionless one he wore after the forest temple. "You most likely were not there," he said, not looking up from the task of serving.
"So I was trapped in the shield during the battle? What do you know?" asked Sheik, suddenly suspicious of Link's knowledge.
Link shrugged. "I don't know anything. But if you think about it, that seems like the most logical turn of events," he said, holding his cup with both hands. "You say you left after teaching me the song of Spirit, and your memory stops right after going back to report to Zelda. She had to have been the one who knocked you out. It took me a while to complete the spirit temple, but she needed Nabooru to set down the shield I found, so there is something she had to do during that period of time, trusting that she could created the shield with Rauru and Nabooru's help. after I had completed the temple."
"But how could she have known that Nabooru was the sage of spirit when you had yet to purify the temple?" asked Sheik
"She knew because I had to complete it as a child and as an adult. I went back to the temple of time and returned seven years to complete the temple as a child. That was when I met Nabooru, and Zelda must have known of he rebelion during the war. Considering my progress, she must have known that I would be done in enough time for her to complete whatever she had to do, and then when I came back to the temple of time she posed as you. I think, she wanted to use the power of the triforce and the ocarina of time, to resettle the timelines to erase Ganondorf from existence. She must have needed you for it for some reason. The very energy of the shield seemed to resonate against the reality around it, so I figured very quickly that the shield must have been set in place before the timelines changed."
"Changed timelines? Erase Ganondorf from existence? I have no idea what you are talking about. Didn't you defeat Ganondorf during the battle? What... what 'timeline' is the one we're living in then?" asked Sheik, his anxiety skyrocketing.
Link took a moment before explaining. "In the timeline we are currently experiencing Zelda banished Ganondorf to the dark realm, and brought us back to the past. But not the original past. A past where neither Ganondorf nor you ever existed," he said. "And no, I didn't defeat Ganondorf. It was impossible for me, you see, he had a part of a triforce."
"B-but you are the hero of time. The prophecy said that-"
Link cut him off. "The prophecy said I would be able to travel through time and wield the master sword, which I do. But every part of the triforce has the same power divided into different skills. Even if the triforce of courage gave me the same power as the triforce of power gave Ganondorf, neither would have been able to defeat the other, and we would have been stuck at a perfect standoff forever," said Link and took a sip of his tea. "Zelda must have known it then, if it was so evident even for me. My power was only good enough to keep him down for long enough so she was able to banish him."
They sat in silence, with only the sounds of the burning heart between them. Link unwilling to look up from the table and meet Sheik's gaze.
"So he was never defeated," finally said Sheik. "You should have told me all of this earlier."
"I had been looking for a better moment to tell you. I didn't know if it would be better to speak with Zelda first, to know her reasons for-"
"Her reasons for what, Link?!" yelled Sheik, standing up. "For erasing me from existence?! For making sure not even my mother would remember me?!"
Link glared up at him, but seemed unmoved. "Yes. Sheik, I know this is very hard for you," he said in a calming voice, getting up with open arms.
"Very hard for me? Are you even listening to yourself? You knew it was Zelda and the sages who had put me there! How do I know you're not lying now? How do I know you didn't work with Zelda to put me there?" asked Sheik, shifting to a defensive pose. He felt suddenly exposed without his mask, but the feeling of his daggers under his gloves grounded him.
Link's face of neutrality vanished, and he looked as if he had been struck. "Sheik, I would never-"
"You have lied to me all this time!"
"I didn't lie! I just wanted to give you more time to feel more like yourself, so it wouldn't be as hard on you. I wish I had had time to get adjusted. We all made sacrifices, and I know it's hard. Please calm down, we will get to the bottom of this, but I'm not the enemy here Sheik," said Link, approaching him slowly. When Sheik didn't move he set his hand on his shoulders. "If I had known you were real...I'm sorry, for being so easily deceived."
Sheik relaxed a little. "It's ok. It's not like we were very close in the first place," said Sheik, letting his head fall against Link's chest. He felt cheated out of growing too.
"You were a bit mean to me too," said Link, laughing.
"I had to be. You were our only hope, and I had to make sure you succeeded," said Sheik. "Although your childish crush made everything a bit awkward."
Link froze for a second, and then pushed Sheik away from him. When Sheik looked up he saw he was completely red.
"I-I didn't-" he stuttered.
"Link, it's ok. You thought I was a woman, it doesn't matter."
"I didn't think you-!" started Link, but he stopped himself and stepped away from Sheik, covering his mouth. It was the only childish gesture that Sheik had seen on him since waking.
"Wait, you didn't think I was a woman? Despite my long hair?"
"I...I did, yeah, I did think you were a woman," said Link, looking at the floor and backing away from Sheik, but he was so obviously lying, it was almost laughable.
"No, you didn't," said Sheik, approaching him just as Link backed himself into a wall. "I thought it had been so easy to trick you because I had told Zelda that you thought I was a woman, but you knew all the time. You knew."
Link felt the wall against his back yet tried to get farther away from Sheik.
"I...I'm s-sorry," said Link. "I didn't know it was wrong back then. I-If it bothers you-"
"Link, it's not wrong," said Sheik, but Link still wouldn't look at him, so Link grabbed his face, forcing him to look at him. "Link, whatever happens, I want you to know that it's not wrong."
Link took a deep breath. "Can we please stop talking about my feelings? We didn't cover this in hero school," said Link, with a nervous smile.
"Hmph, so you really are not that different from your shadow," said Sheik, poking Link's cheek.
"They cannot be different at all," said Impa, from the entrance to the room where she had been. Sheik almost jumped away from Link, who in turn tried to back away, and hit his head against the wall.
He cried out and stumbled, holding his head.
Impa chuckled at the sight of them. Sheik looked her up and down, noticing that there was something different to her. She seemed more herself in a way that Sheik couldn't put into words.
"Mother?" he asked, hating the way his voice trembled.
Impa extended her arms to him, and the recognition shone in her eyes. Sheik ran to hug her, unable to form words. He wanted to tell her he loved her, he missed her, that he had thought he had lost her forever, but he could only cry against her shoulder.