Chapter Nineteen

This is really short, but I felt it ought to be its own chapter. Well, that and between looming finals and having Skyward Sword to play, who knows how much writing I'll actually get done?

This chapter is all Sheik background, and will hopefully answer your questions. Enjoy!

My only crime was to be born too powerful.

I. . .saw things even Sheikah shouldn't. Sheikah should see the present, not the past, and certainly not the way I did. My hand placed where another had been, a word, sometimes a look was all I needed to see. In this way I learned, and I became stronger than the others.

The King feared me, but his daughter loved me, child that she was. In this way were alike, she and I, knowing things nobody else ever could. Even my parents didn't understand.

I don't blame my parents for my fate, nor do I blame the little princess.

Princess Zelda. . . she showed me such kindness, when the sights became too much for me and I would hide, somehow she'd find me, and I'd feel her little hand on my shoulder, whispering words of comfort.

My mother protected me as long as she could, but we could not keep what I was hidden forever.

It was an not uncommon practice, in those days, for the Royal Family to ask for a Sheikah sacrifice, proof of their unwavering loyalty.

I was just another shadow to the King, but one with enough power to pose a threat should I choose. I

never would have, not for anything.

But Zelda's father was always fated to be a damn fool.

I was sixteen, Zelda nine, and he just ten when I first saw him. And I knew.

I saw in his mind all that had been in the Time That Never Was. Mother told me later that I collapsed, but I don't remember that. I remember waking with seven years' worth of memories that never happened, preparations for a Hero no longer needed. Who I had been and who I was, merged into one by that first look at the boy garbed in green. The boy with the sad, haunted eyes.

In the Time That Never Was, I disobeyed my mother's orders not to speak of my gift, and I tried to warn the King.

In the Time That Never Was, the Evil King whispered to the Foolish King, "he is dangerous."

In the Time That Never Was, the Foolish King listened, and the princess cried and pleaded, but she was ignored, for what could a girl know of these things?

In the Time That Never Was, I was sent to the heart of the Shadow Temple to die. Many Sheikah accompanied me; none returned, for Ganondorf's treachery doomed them all.

I remember laying on the floor of the Room of Sacrifice, my clothes wet with the blood of those who had died before me on the whim of the Royal Family. I remember my sister, a magic-user in her own right, forced to wield the blade that would end me. I remember her tears, bloody tracks smeared across her face.

I remember thinking that I did not want to die so uselessly. I remember thinking of the princess, and how she too cried for me. I remember thinking of the Evil King, and what I had seen when I looked at

him; power, greed, hatred, corruption. He would take the princess if he could. He would destroy her.

I remember praying to Lord Iblis. "Please," I whispered, "If I must die, let me protect her in death."

I heard the call of a crow, and saw my god kneeling over me, with such sorrow in his eyes. "Let it be." His magic swirled around me. My own blood rose from the floor to surround my body. What happened next I couldn't say, for surrounded in the swirling red I could see nothing else. Lord Iblis spoke to the others, and there was chanting and haunting music, led by the god himself. I heard a woman's voice scream with rage and I was lifted up, up from my body, and then she was in front me, within the red. A twisted version of the Princess, beautiful but for the hatred on her face.

"Take her within your soul, and for a thousand years your princess will remain safe." Lord Iblis' voice murmured to me, somehow intelligible above the noise.

"Gladly." I said.

All seemed calm in the Time That Was, but I knew it would not last. I knew I would be needed again to serve as I had in the Time That Never Was. I knew that I could not remain amongst the living.

I knew that in the Time That Never Was, I loved the boy in green with the haunted eyes. But I also knew it could not be.

I did not wait for the King's summons. I told my mother what I'd seen, and then I told the princess. Her eyes looked at me with such sadness, and at that moment I knew that she remembered too.

I showed the others what I'd seen. The destruction. The pain.

My sister begged me to reconsider. Ganondorf is gone, she said, sealed away within the Realm of Twilight. But, she knew as well as I that as long as he held the Triforce of Power he would return, and I. . .I would be there when he did.

The spell was cast a second time. My body lay upon the ground, surrounded by crystals of red, while I, a true shadow now, a spirit, stood above it. My body would be moved to the Burial Chamber later, to join the others who died here.

I looked into my sister's shining eyes, I knew the truth. They had to forget. I had to forget. Everyone had to forget that I was ever a Sheikah, ever more than what I now was.

When Link dared to ask my mother about a boy named Sheik, she told him she knew none by that name. She did not lie to him. Sheikah cannot lie.

Thank you to the Chapter Eighteen Reviewers RococoSpade (Thank you for being awesome and letting me use Iblis! I am not posting my entire response here), Kick-Aft (Thank you very much! Yeah, I always wondered what would be down there too. The boat had to go SOMEWHERE. And the columns. Something really should be there.), Claradwor (I was really afraid you were going to kill me. Glad you didn't. I don't want to know what you're doing with that Gufuu, though.), Rose Starglen (It's a reference to a song from Spamalot.), Demonologist666 (O.O *hides*), and Alranath (I'm not typing your response here either. It's too long.)