Disclaimer: These characters are not mine, with the exception of Shane. I own nada, except for Shane. I don't own Hyrule, only Shane.

First and Foremost
by Cappucinno

CHAPTER TWO: IN PIECES (Part II)

November 29, 2016
Various locations.

Mondays were harsh by nature.

They yanked you straight out of your weekend daze and into the cruel reality of the working world like nothing else. And there was nothing worse than waking up with a killer hangover at six in the morning so that you could make it to work by seven.

Unless of course your name was Zelda Harkinian who blinked into awareness with a killer hangover at four thirty in the morning, having gotten absolutely no sleep because you never had a weekend daze to begin with.

That meant that Monday was hell.

Zelda glowered at the little red numbers on the microwave that cheerily read: 4:32. In the goddamn morning. That meant that it was too late to even attempt getting a decent nap and too early to start anything.

Not that she had anything she wanted to do. It wasn't like she actually missed making breakfast for a certain fair-haired, blue-eyed, devastatingly attractive young man with a heartbreaker's smile and strong warm arms.

No. Of course not.

She kept telling herself that she'd done it because it was just a pain in the ass to always have to worry about someone else's wellbeing in addition to her own. No matter what crap Malon tried to spout about how wonderful it was to care for someone else.

Speaking of Malon…

Zelda glanced down at the small phone she'd been holding for the latter part of the night. No missed calls from Link. Not that she'd stayed up waiting, even hoping for one.

Her azure eyes drifted from the phone in her hand to the little red numbers and back again before the corners of her lips piqued up in what could have passed for a smile. She immediately flipped the hood of her phone up and began rapid-firing away on a screen that read 'New Message'.

Two hours later found Zelda in a quaint little coffee shop, her gaze guiltily locked on to her fidgeting thumbs as the redhead sitting across from her proceeded to deal Zelda the most brutal stare she'd ever been on the receiving end of.

Zelda was looking everywhere but at the tanned redhead. Malon, for her part, was glaring as Zelda's azure eyes darted to and fro, lighting constantly upon the window just over Malon's shoulder.

Window, Malon, floor, thumbs, window, Malon, repeat…

Malon continued to stare her good friend down, her perpetually chapped lips narrowed into an unforgiving line.

"So, Zelda. Let's get this straight. You didn't say anything to him. No conversations, no warnings, no phone calls, no head-up, no hinting—nothing. And then, without talking to any of us about it, you moved yourself out."

The furious redhead paused, checking the volume and general momentum of her voice as she took a sip of her hot cocoa to calm herself down.

Malon easily possessed the most sensitive stomach in the world, and therefore despised coffee so much that her puny little body would reject the substance with every fiber it possessed.

Needless to say, she'd decided to stick to hot cocoa all through college, a choice her dietician would likely bemoan her for later on in her life.

At Zelda's guilty silence, Malon went on, chin rested on the bridge formed by her interlocked fingers. "You, my dear friend, are an idiot. Firstly, how are we supposed to be keeping you safe if we don't even know where you are? You should have cleared that with Sheik waaay ahead of time. Secondly, are you out of your mind?"

Immediately Zelda straightened up indignantly, her mouth opening to fire off some witty remark in response to the fondly distributed insult. She was cut off by Malon holding up a hand to silence her.

"No. Don't even. Zelda, you just—I really can't believe that you did that to him. I just can't. It's inhumane. Don't you have a conscience anymore? You know how he feels about you. Furthermore, you know how you feel about him."

"He's a grown man, we can't play pretend anymore! And if this all comes out, me living with a man I'm not married to? The repercussions would be huge. And besides, it's not like I could actually stick around anymore, it's been driving him up the wall." Zelda responded, fingers angrily gripping at the edge of the table as she pushed back the wave of nausea that threatened to overtake her at the mere thought of what she'd said. "It was for his own good."

Malon knew an excuse when she heard one and she narrowed her eyes at her blonde haired charge, trying to gauge what had Zelda so badly spooked. She looked like she hadn't had a good night's sleep in weeks.

"For his own good. Kind of like your 'just friends' policy? And then the whole bed-sharing thing?" Zelda blushed hotly.

"Malon, you know that he would have gotten hurt. I'm just trying to protect him."

"Zelda, open your eyes. He did get hurt. The press would have been bad, sure, but at least he still would have had his best friend. You really think Link is the kind of guy who cares about bad press?"

Zelda faltered ever so slightly before regaining her proverbial footing. She snorted and crossed her arms, looking pointedly away from her friend.

"I… I just have a bad feeling about this. I think it's better for us all if we take a little space from each other."

"...You got a bad feeling so you moved out and broke his heart?" Malon had a way with making even Zelda's best ideas sound idiotic. Malon also had a way with knowing when Zelda was full of shit. "Something's going on here."

"He doesn't even know who I am!" Zelda protested, a little too quickly. "He'll live."

"Is that was this is about?" Malon asked, a hint of worry bleeding into her voice. Her voice dropped, quieter and more insistent. "Zelda, I know you better than this. What's going on?"

Zelda just shook her head, tight lipped. Malon pressed further, unwilling to let the issue at hand slip away.

"No," Zelda said slowly, as if she were struggling with herself. "It just… it would sound crazy. Just trust me, I'm doing the right thing."

Malon threw up her arms in an exasperated manner. "If you're really doing the right thing here, then why the hell did you call me at four in the morning the very day after you moved out telling me that we had a Code Red and that you couldn't get to sleep? You haven't done that since highschool where that creepy businessman tried to blackmail you once he figured out who you were."

"I told you, I just— it sounds crazy." Zelda shook her head, barely managing to retain her regal composure. "He's not safe with me. I don't want him to get hurt."

"And breaking his heart isn't the same as him getting hurt?"

Zelda sighed.

"Not this again…"

"Look, I'm just trying to make sense of this. I'll go with you on this one, I'll trust you." Malon asked, leaning forward in a conspiratorial manner. "Do you want to know why?"

"Fine, I'll bite." The fair-haired Zelda responded, suddenly looking very weary. "Why?"

"Because you're utterly terrified that you'll lose him. I can see that in your eyes. Something's got you spooked, bad, so maybe you're right. Maybe he's safer right now." Malon had that look in her eyes, that look she got when she'd just sunk her teeth into something good and had no intentions of letting go. "But I'm going to get to the bottom of this, and I'm going to fix this, Goddesses help me. Because maybe you're right, but this doesn't change the fact that you love the guy and you two need each other."

"Malon," Zelda groaned in an unladylike manner. "I'm a member of the royal family. I'm the heir to the throne. I'm undercover until the day of my coronation and technically speaking my hand has been promised to someone. Why can't you understand that this—this whole romance, it isn't possible. I just want to keep him safe."

Malon looked at her like she'd grown a second head. Zelda sighed.

The blonde gave up on convincing her close friend and advisor, opting instead to rest her cheek on her fist and drum her other hand against the table idly.

"…Have you told Sheik about all this yet?"

Malon lit up like a Christmas tree and Zelda instantly regretted bringing up her cryptic head of security. And so Zelda spent the remainder of her morning pondering existence whilst 'hming' and 'awwing' at Malon's enthuisiatic tales about her text conversations with Sheik.

Most of which were cryptic riddles that amounted to, 'You're a stalker'.

After her meeting with Malon, one of her personal attendants and closest friends, Zelda was late for work. She'd somehow managed to get herself hopelessly lost on the one-mile trek from the coffee shop to her office, lose a shoe, and accidentally break the screen on her new cell-phone in a less than two hour time frame.

Needless to say, Zelda was a walking disaster upon that fateful November morning. And to add to her infinite glee, it had started snowing on her just before she reached her office building.

With a sigh Zelda sank gratefully down into her plush leather chair, resting her elbows heavily on the dark wood of her desk. Her cheeks were still tinged a lively pink from her morning excursion in the November chill and her clothing was still thoroughly soaked from the melted snow.

"Goddesses," Zelda groaned. "Why does the world hate me today?"

A young man leaning against her doorframe raised a brow at her antics. "I haven't the slightest inkling, princess. "

Zelda jerked upright, her heart pounding in her chest. Link? No, a different blonde. Surprise was writ all over her face as the identity of the young man registered and a slow grin brightened her face. She immediately leapt up out of her seat, arms outstretched.

"Sheik!"

The man smiled—or did he? She could never tell with that scarf around his face—and opened up his arms, catching the bundle of snow-soaked clothing that was Zelda Harkinian as she charged him with a hug.

He was about average height for a guy, a good half-a-head taller than Zelda. His skin was dark with a desert tan and his eyes were a deep wine red. His dark blonde hair was fashioned in a messy manner, eerily reminiscent of how it had been even back in high school. He didn't look like he had aged a day, but he'd always been like that. Mysteriously constant.

Sheik, yet another close friend, and her head of security.

"Princess." He said, fondly ruffling his friend's hair. "You look... well."

"Don't even start with me. There's so much going on right now, you have no idea…" Zelda said with a heavy sigh.

"I have a few," Sheik said breezily, "But I'd like to know what's going on in that head of yours."

Zelda leaned back, looking wan. "Malon."

"Mmm, small details." Sheik shrugged. "So, you finally left him. What happened?"

The fair haired young woman sighed for the millionth time that morning. "That seems to be the question of the day."

"Well, I've been trying to talk you out of that living arrangement for years. The fact that you've finally given in of your own accord is something of an affront to my pride. And it's not like you."

Zelda laughed rather airily, but it didn't mask the tension seeping out of her as she leaned back in her seat.

"Look Sheik, I'd really love to talk to you, but my boss will have my head for breakfast tomorrow if he catches me slacking off." She waved her hand around to indicate the room. "You have no idea how many people would kill for this window office."

"I doubt the wretch would protest," Sheik said in his understated way, settling himself more comfortably against the door frame. "For the time being, I am to be considered a client."

"A client?" Zelda frowned. Sheik had taken on various undercover identities and impersonated more than a handful of people in order to stay close and keep his eye on her, but she could see no reason for him to do so now. "And that's why you're carrying a briefcase. You do know that you don't look like a businessman, right?"

Sheik's eyes crinkled in a smile. "I'm not undercover princess. Your parents have arranged with the agency to begin planning your introduction to the Hylian people. Your identity is, of course, still hidden from them but I've requested to work with you to plan the event."

The world-weary expression on Zelda's face quickly morphed into one of pure glee and Sheik took a mental picture of the rare expression. Her violet eyes had gone wide, making the glaringly obvious dark lines beneath them less prominent and her lips had turned up into a heartbreakingly sincere smile.

Not a grin, not a smirk, not a quirk of her lips. A smile. One that was pure and true and only ever induced by two things: the idea of coming out of the woodworks and Link.

That smille re-centered him on the other purpose of his visit.

"Sheik, marry me? Please? That's amazing, I can finally—do we know when?" Zelda's happy rambling gushed onwards and Sheik laughed, placing a hand on the girl's shoulder to forcibly settle her down and guide her back to her chair.

"Princess, it is regrettable, but first there are other things we should discuss. I am not going to be able to allow you to side step this issue." The look on his face was one of utter seriousness. "You left him. I need to know why."

Zelda's smile fell slowly from her face as she settled back into her chair. Sheik inwardly winced at the sudden loss of energy. Her silence was a resistant one, her ever-present guarded look returning quickly to her eyes. She set her jaw in a mulish imitation of annoyance and pointedly refused to look at Sheik.

Sheik saw something else in her posture. Hidden in the downward twitch of her lips and the restless motion of her legs. Zelda was afraid and she was barely doing a passable job of hiding it.

The blonde man sighed and ran a distracted hand through his hair. "Princess, I am only inquiring because it is my duty to know. Members of your inner circle," Malon, Zelda mentally deduced. "Have been expressing concern for your current state."

"It's nothing." She said, her voice was cold enough to freeze hot lava. "I don't want to talk about it."

"If it was nothing, you'd have no qualms talking about it."

"It was the right thing to do."

"How so?"

Zelda was silent once more.

"Princess. I took the first plane I could here last night when your new rental contract came up on the system. Since then, I have spent several excruciatingly painful hours in the car, thirty minutes convincing security to let me in to speak to your parents, and another hour arranging business with your boss. I came because I was worried about you." Sheik's voice was pitched low, barely above a whisper but Zelda caught every word. He spoke slowly, each syllable pronounced. "Tell me what happened."

This time Zelda responded, but it wasn't a Zelda that Sheik was familiar with. Her voice was hardly above a whisper and Sheik had to strain himself to still his breathing enough to make out what that eerily fragile voice was saying.

"I—I had no other choice, Sheik."

"Princess. Did he know about your… history?"

"No, that's not it. He wouldn't even suspect—" She responded, bleary azure eyes barely cracked open. "No, he doesn't know."

This was not the Zelda that Sheik had grown up with and watched over. Something had scared his proud princess witless.

"Princess, you need to tell me. Unburden yourself."

"But, Sheik I… I just want to protect him. I don't know why, but he isn't safe and—I think it's my fault."

This was all painfully familiar. Sheik could almost feel the tumultuous flow of time reversing all over again. History was repeating itself.

"Princess. If something is threatening you, I need to know."

"It's not that straightforward, Sheik. I know what I did wasn't… wasn't perfect, but it's better than hurting him."

Sheik was beginning to lose his patience with this frightened woman and the way she danced around his questions. This wasn't Zelda. Zelda was strong and willful and confident. If something had threatened her loved ones, she would work endlessly to protect them by finding and eliminating the threat. She wouldn't hide them and cut her ties, she would keep them close.

Sheik needed to know what was going on. And so he was harsh with her, pressing her.

"You already hurt him."

Zelda fell silent again and drew her legs up to her chest, settling her cheek against the crest of her knees. She drew in a laborious breath and released it in a heart-wrenching sigh, her eyes falling closed.

"I know."

"You're being selfish. You've broken his heart because of some farfetched fear, you've worried Malon sick to death about you, and you're wasting my time. If something is threatening you, it is my job to know. If you are in danger, we are all in danger, and by keeping it from us you leave us vulnerable. You would endanger us because you are uncomfortable talking about… this fear? That is not the Zelda I know.

Sheik wasn't sure if it was his words or her own nagging guilt that made her continue. Her eyes remained closed and she swallowed the lump that had been slowly forming in her throat throughout the conversation.

Emotional displays weren't like Zelda at all.

"…That's… no, that's not what I—If I knew, I would tell you, I really would, but—"

Sheik was tempted to run away and call up Malon and Saria, because he found that he was having a hard time not slapping some sense into his charge. He'd only ever known Zelda as the stubborn and willful girl he'd grown up protecting. And that Zelda was certainly not this shell of a person breaking-down before his very eyes.

This frail creature frustrated the hell out of him. And she scared him. What had Zelda so scared?

"Don't think I don't feel bad, because I do." Her eyes opened slightly and there was a flicker of that familiar fire that forced Sheik to stay rooted in place. "I felt horrible for hurting him, I still do, but I know I did the right thing."

"Princess…?"

"How is it that I always end up hurting the people that I want to protect the most? I didn't want to do that. I just… didn't want him to get hurt. But I—Sheik, I've been… I've seen things."

Sheik was effectively silenced.

"Every single night he's not there, every single month, every moment, every breath, I have these dreams. Sheik, I've watched him die. These aren't just dreams, Sheik, they feel real, they feel like—"

"Memories." Sheik finished, quietly. "They feel like memories."

"I see him die every night he's not there. At first it was easy to dismiss, vague. A nightmare because I was alone. But then, they kept coming, and it gets clearer, but I still don't see it. It all feels so real and I'm seeing him die and somehow I know—it seems crazy, maybe I'm losing my mind—but I know somehow his death is my fault. And they're not dreams, sometimes it doesn't feel like a memory sometimes it feels like a premonition, Sheik." Zelda's voice was lower again now, and her face was partially hidden behind the crook of her elbow.

"Princess," Sheik sighed. "…It may not be as simple as it seems. You desire to protect him, you make sacrifices on his behalf. These… dreams you're having. Doesn't it make sense that he's doing the same thing? That in these dreams, he wanted you to let him make sacrifices for you?"

Zelda had no clue, then, that she was pushing away the one destined to be her savior. That was how their destiny had been written, though it pained Sheik to see it repeat itself yet again. He needed to convince Zelda to stay by Link. He needed to convince her that she was not and would not be the cause of his death. He needed to lie to her.

"But he—"

"It is my belief," Sheik began resolutely, cutting Zelda off. "That based off of the things I've heard about this Link, he is far stronger than you give him credit for. Your dreams feel real, but they're just dreams Zelda. You're running away from your own imagination."

"It's cowardice." Sheik shook his head, a disappointed smile curved at his lips. If he had to hurt his princess to save her life, then so be it. "You're hiding because afraid of Link getting hurt on your behalf. Nightmares are common when you're under stress, princess—I think you fear him getting slaughtered by public opinion. You can't protect him from that by running away."

"I'm sorry." Zelda's voice was weak and Sheik fought off the wave of guilt that engulfed him. "I'm sorry, Sheik, but I think you're wrong."

"Zelda, it is hard. I am aware. But, he loved you." Sheik's tongue faltered and he quickly corrected himself. "Loves you. So, let him."

"But, I... I just. I..." The look on her face was one of undisguised pain. "You don't get it, Sheik. I wish I could, but that's just not possible."

"Because you are not capable of letting him make his own decisions, Zelda?" He paused in the door way, looking grim as he watched the blonde flinch. Sheik felt a pang of guilt for pushing her so hard against her instincts.

He watched as she wavered, hesitating, and then saw her resolve in the straightening of her spine and the clenching of her fists. He felt a simultaneous pulse of panic—it wasn't working, she didn't buy it—followed by fear and, so small he almost missed it, he felt hope.

"You're trying to do the right thing, Sheik. I know I sound like I'm losing it, but I'm right and I know I'm right. I may not know exactly what's going to happen, but I'm not going to let him die because of me."

A/N: This chapter has been extensively revised as of 6/27/2012. I highly recommend re-reading it.

reviewpuh-leaseIluffyew?

-Cappucinno