Part 2: Anger

It would be several weeks before Link had a moment alone with the young Sheikah woman again. The last time he had been in her presence alone he'd been war beaten and sickly physically. This second time he'd found himself in her presence, the war had taken a much darker turn psychologically.

The day had started like many. Spirits were high, Impa gave a quick pep talk, they'd praised the Goddess for her blessings and protection, then they'd followed their Hero into the battlefield. And it seemed to run fairly well. They had taken several keeps. Spirits were high, victory bubbled in their minds and hearts.

They would be victorious today!

And then it had happened.

The Sorceress of Darkness summoned something much more vile than ever before and even the Hero himself was unprepared for what was going to happen.

A dark mist began to seep out of the earth. They feared it was poison, so the warriors all ran for safety in attempts to escape the death they had assumed the fog brought forth.

But the fog had a different poison entirely. It wasn't one that damaged their bodies or poisoned their flesh; it was a fog that poisoned their hearts and destroyed their minds. It turned the Hylian forces against each other.

No one was quite certain how, or why, but one moment the Hyrulian forces were fighting victoriously against the monsters that Cia reigned over and the next half their force fought against them for no rhyme or reason told.

Friends fought friends.

Brothers slayed brothers.

Hylians that had known each other longer than they'd known their wives and children tore down their comrades as if they suddenly mistook them for the enemy. And no one knew why.

No one shy of the Hero.

The dark truth was that Link was in the presence of the sorceress when she had cast her spell. He'd been too preoccupied with fighting her off himself - something he'd been warned of doing without his troops - and hadn't taken her threats to heart. She'd laughed and toyed with him, putting up a fight for him and a game for herself.

And then she'd vanished.

Link hadn't quite understood the severity of the sorceress's threats until he had returned to his troops and found a majority of them gravely injured or dead all together. The horror he saw with his own two eyes when he found Impa and Sheik and the remaining of his small army was one that would haunt his mind for the rest of his life.

Link's head buzzed with something profoundly unsettling as he retreated to his tent that night. The camp was quiet - even for that late hour - and he didn't want to think of why because he was well aware of the answer and didn't dare remember it.

Half the camp was gone, fallen on the battlefield in a number too great to even bring their bodies back for burial.

He pressed his eyes closed and felt his throat constrict and swell with the thought of it all. Even in the blackness of the dark night, he couldn't shake the images and thoughts from his mind to find the rest his body so craved.

This was war. He'd trained for it. He'd lived his entire life waiting to be a knight, dreaming of serving the royal court. His father had been a knight, and the his father before him, and his fathers before him. He knew war brought loss and death and he had to stay cold and distant from all the horrors so that he could wake again in the morning to serve Hyrule.

But…

Link grunted loudly in annoyance and turned onto his back, now staring at the faint glow of the moon that shined through the thick canvas of his tent. He wouldn't cry, he couldn't. He wouldn't put into words the thoughts that came to his mind. But he could still see their faces - not those of the ones that had betrayed them, but the faces of those that were betrayed.

Knowing sleep wasn't going to come to him that evening and rest was about as likely as Hylia herself descending to the earth to stop the war, Link game up on the endeavor for the time being and rose to a sitting position with a loud and annoyed grunt.

He couldn't stay in this dark, enclosed space. It felt suffocating and too much like a tomb thinking about the day. Link quickly rose to his feet, threw on a plain undershirt and his boots and waltzed out of his tent with a goal in mind: clarity.

The cool grass crunched under his feet and air buzzed with the sound of various insects and slithering lizards and perhaps what may have sounded like an owl off in the distance. Link didn't necessarily have a conscious location in mind, but walked off in the direction where he bathed earlier that evening. Perhaps a calm body of water could remind him of the lake back home and the simpler pleasures he'd enjoyed prior to being named 'the Hero of Hyrule' and embarking on this massive war that plagued the land. He approached the serenity of the quiet space and immediately felt some sense of relief lift the immeasurable weight that had continued accumulating on his shoulders.

But it wasn't enough to completely ease the anger in his heart. He looked out on the moon's reflection in the water and saw the eyes of all his comrades he'd lost today staring back at him. Their voices echoed in his head and memories stained his mind with reminders of his own defeat.

He probably would have sat there the rest of the night if he had been left undisturbed. But not soon after sitting on the grass to reflect on his own shortcomings that day, he'd heard a branch snapping above him and he immediately leapt to his feet with deadly focused mind. His left hand reached for the blade across his back, tight fingers clasped around the well worn grip and waited to see what would attack.

"Always on guard, Hero?" A familiar voice wafted from above and Link turned his eyes to the source of the voice to find Sheik perched on a large tree branch, legs hanging off the side and eyes facing over the lake. There was something inherently different about her tonight, however. The usually graceful, poised, leathally elegant Sheikah didn't sit tall and straight with elegance and cat-like lines and movements. She'd looked instead tired and ragged with the weight of the world pressing down on his crooked shoulders and hunched spine.

Perhaps this was her way of grieving too.

"You should go back to your tent," she told him with a low tone in her voice that teased and prodded at his already bubbling temper. It flared a tendril of white hot anger inside him. Link attempted to push the comment aside and return to his own attempts at search for peace, but it would appear that the young Sheikah woman was ready for one more fight that evening. "You'll need your beauty sleep to…"

"Fuck you." The words spewed from Link's lips before he'd even registered what he was saying. Yet, once they'd left his mouth, he didn't regret them. If anything, the outburst had released a small fragment of pressure building in his chest.

The glare he immediately received did not need light or the rest of Sheik's face exposed for the legendary Hero to decipher. Link starred back, hard lines and harsh lights and shadows cast by the moon shining above turned his usually handsome face dark, tortured, and fragmented. In fact, his expression and appearance reflected his spirit within perfectly.

He watched Sheik with deadly accuracy as she shifted over the branch a step and then jumped to the floor with unmatched elegance. She landed on the grass with such a light step any well-minded man would actually wonder if the woman had cat genes in her. She approached him slowly with a fluidity to her step that was not atypical for the Sheikah warrior but impressive and mesmerizing all the same.

"Say it again," she demanded as she approached closer until standing only a hair's length from his chest. Link wasn't sure if he'd ever stood so close to the woman before, but if he had, he certainly hadn't noticed her impressive height quite so uploce before.

If Link had been a smart man then, he would have realized much sooner that this wasn't an argument meant to label him as victor. But clear thoughts were low on his mind at that time and so he simply stared at her with ice in his eyes and lips sharp enough to slice through flesh. He didn't spoken again, his oddly uncommon anger and rage all ready to boil and spatter out in this moment. He'd expected the woman to say something else - give him a reason to despise her and prove Impa's suspicion. Instead she'd only locked unblinking eyes with him.

"Say...it…" she pronounced each syllable carefully and slow for an extra emphasis. "Again." Her eyes bore into his with an intensity that could smite lesson Hylians in their spot.

If she wanted to hear it again, so be it.

"Fuck you." Sheik's lightning fast reflexes reacted before Link even registered her movement. The side of his face exploded with the force of a perfectly planned slap that burst into explosive heat from the edge of his ear drum to the corner of his eye with a loud and unprepared-for 'crack.'

He stumbled two steps backward with a look that finally showed emotion: shock. Sheik's chest rose and fell with the hatred inside her. Sheikah were supposed to stay separated from their emotions and hard as steal no matter the situation. The woman glaring with the wish of death before Link at the moment was not meeting the extremely precise Sheikah standards, though.

"Do you think because you are the Hero that you are the only one to blame for the deaths today?" Her voice was ice cold and sharp as a fine blade. "Do you think their blood is only on your hands?" She took two steps forward until her nose was only an inch from his. Link had never noticed how tall this woman was until now as she stood perfectly eye level to him.

Link did not speak, attention completely captivated on the words she spoke and look of deadly precision in her red eyes. She was so close, he could smell the mint on her breath and see the dark shadows of sleeplessness on his skin.

"Do not mistake my dedication for a icy heart, Hero."

She turned on her heel as silently as the night and vanished towards her campsite. Link stood in his spot several minutes looking in the direction in which Sheik had vanished replaying their heated argument in his head before finally trudging back towards his own tent.

Now as he lay in his bedroll more than an hour later, all he could do was replay the altercation with Sheik in head, all the things he'd reacted badly too, and dwell on how much of the mess was entirely his doing.

He made a loud and disgruntled noise in the black tent space.

He needed something to refocus his mind. He needed something to refocus his attention and give him the feelings of release he so desperately desired. He needed companionship.

The last thought struck him blind much like the sharp slap of Sheik's hand.

Companionship? He wanted a woman?

He did. But not just a woman to fulfill his empty-hearted sexual desires. He wanted the company of a body close, the feel of someone's warmth near him, and a voice to hear besides his own. He wanted a conversation and to know he wouldn't sleep alone. He knew many knights sent off to war frequented the shadier corners of their frequent stops and paid heavy fees for rented company. He'd frowned on in, repulsed by the very thought of using another human like that for your own selfish needs.

But...

The nearly empty tent echoed with the sound of his over-exaggerated sigh.

It certainly wouldn't hurt on a night like this.