This has gone way out of control.

It was only meant to be two chapters, but somehow it has evolved into four, maybe five. It had first evolved into three, but it got kind of boring because it was all about Sheik and how depressing and dark things were, so I decided to add Lin and Zelda back into the mix, and that just made things explde even more.

I hope you all enjoy!

Touch - Part 2

"What did he do to me?" she'd queried irritably, crunching into a small pear, waiting for an answer as she chewed.

Tharlaigh sighed. At least she wasn't insisting she could get out of bed anymore. "Mind-magic. One of the most obscure circles of power, considered to be the hardest to master and to detect, since there's no outward side-effects if you're victimized. Well, unless you're forced to act particularly insanely. Highly illegal, for obvious reasons."

"For taking another's will?"

"Not just that. The ways of abuse are endless; taking another's secrets, changing memories, making victims see things that aren't there, believe things against their natural way of thought. Admittedly these all link to a form of bending another's will to one's own, but it's more… subtle, than that."

She frowned in distaste; subtle was not her strong suit. "So, he...?"

"Made you believe he was someone you would want to devote yourself to, completely and eternally. He tried to take your loyalty."

She shuddered. "It was more than that."

"You'd know best. I only see the vague intentions of spells."

"Must be useful," she sighed wistfully, taking another bite of pear. "Seeing what's coming."

"Only if I can do something about it," he muttered, picking at an indent of melted flesh above his right eyebrow. At least, where it would've been.

"...Is there a way to fight back?"

"Pain's an easy shield, to keep them out."

Her face contorted incredulously. "Eh?"

He smiled. She would like this. "What do you think when you're in pain?"

"Uh, ow?"

"Exactly. Just ow. There's no room for other rational thought, so there's nothing the spell can work with."

Her lips twitched up in amused disbelief. "Are you telling me to pinch myself if I think I'm being controlled again?"

"If you can, though it depends on how well they've mastered the craft. If you can escape just by pinching yourself, then well. You're up against a novice. Being already injured can be useful; keeping track of an injury, reminding yourself that it's meant to hurt… can…"

Tharlaigh frowned, mid-pick. He was using his left hand. On his right cheek. How did that make sense?

"Tharlaigh?"

Tharlaigh shook himself, and the stray thought, away. "Anyway, yes, pain's the bluntest way to go, at least initially. Once they're inside your mind, pain won't be enough to beat them back. It also depends on what they're trying to do-"

"What do you think will happen with your uncle?"

Tharlaigh frowned at the change of subject, slowly lowering his left hand. "He'll go to prison for treason, once he's out of the crystals."

"Where are they keeping him, do you know?"

"...Why?"

"Well," she said, "The guards, you know. Do they know all this? Like really? What if he's already placed them under his influence?"

"...Another way to know you're being manipulated," Sheik growled, fisting his right hand and digging the fingernails hard into his palm, "Is when a memory goes way off track from how it originally happened."

The cut on his hand flared with pain, and the room warped, Lin melted, and in her place loomed Midna. She looked pleasantly displeased.

Ham-handed, he thought, since he couldn't speak with the rod clamped firmly between his teeth, try harder.

She sighed, getting off him and the bed to the cabinet table, where there was a disturbing number of bottles with multicoloured fluids. She began mixing them, humming quietly, checking those damned notes that he would be burning as soon as he was free.

Sweat beaded his forehead, his mouth becoming dry again. His temples were throbbing, two hearts of pain nestled happily in his skull. It was only a matter of time before she got the information she wanted; where Vhighew and his crystallized body was kept, who Lin was, what she meant to him…

Considering the weight of each fact lessened respectively (at least to Midna, the crazy crazy witch), perhaps he should concentrate on the latter-most point?

"So, the girl, Lin. The liaison that Zelda kept from you, yes? How is she able to use faerie magic?"

He thought of Lin's hair and how nice it would look just that bit longer, or shorter, actually; it was at that stage where it looked unkempt no matter what she did with it, so anything would be better, even a bird's nest…

"And what happened to that Hero you so distrusted? Is he dead?"

Sheik breathed, thinking of all the useless silly things about Lin and nothing else, because anything about Hero or the Hat or Zelda or Vhighew would be the end of the interrogation, and Midna would see it, Midna would know, and he would be dead and Lin would be next, and Vhighew Marius Zant would be free.

Never.

"Drink this," she said before tipping a flute of potions down his open mouth, and he drowned on it, coughing and choking and swallowing, his body shaking as it was forced into a state between waking and sleeping. His heart raced, dragging his brain behind it in its mad run through drug-addled dreams, and each heartbeat whispered a name.

Lin. Lin. Lin.

-.-'-.-'-.-

Garden Girl, as he decided to call her, only cropped up when there was work needed to be done in the grounds, which was practically everyday anyway, so that was nowhere near a good indicator. Harvesting, pruning, planting, weeding, even fencing and mucking out the pig pens by the kitchens. After a day or two of working (at least, that was all he noticed of her) she would be gone, and it was infuriating. Zelda would tell him nothing more. Research told him the tradition the Princess had mentioned existed, but it was set aside four generations ago, because of the civil war.

So had Zelda picked any girl she felt like to fill the role? Tharlaigh had slapped the numbed and scarred side of his face twice at the very thought. It would have been better, as much as he hated to admit it, if she'd just picked Hero.

That git was proving himself utterly elusive and impossible to work out also, which was ridiculous. How was that disguise so consistently maintained? Where did he go when he wasn't in the castle? Actually in it, too, because Tharlaigh had followed him around the castle on two occasions, and (oh this was something he could not live down) had lost him on both.

It would have been easier, infinitely easier to just grab him by the throat and smile a friendly smile and ask him why in hell he hid his face, or better yet offer to show one's face for the other.

It was easy to imagine the Hero's expression when Tharlaigh unveiled his own.

So why not do it?

Because Hero hadn't done anything wrong, just, kept doing something that urked Tharlaigh in the extreme (he just had to be a decent young man, if a little nosy and obvious in his admiration of the Sheikah, and skilled with a myriad of combat methods. What wasn't there to like?), so there was no real reason to actively track him down and make him talk.

Sheik had gone so far as to write notes on the damned man, which was infuriating. He didn't do that kind of thing often, but it helped with the mystery he was… almost obsessed with.

Tharlaigh was requesting Hero's presence every time he was asked to go on a mission, whether it be diplomatic or monster-hunting or something ridiculous like placating a few nobles' ruffled feathers. Because of this, a couple of things had become clear. Hero definitely wasn't a group of people pretending to be the same person; left-handed people weren't all that common, he understood too many obscure references to small incidences amongst a variety of missions they'd done together, and injuries. As easy as it was to replicate more mundane injuries like cuts and bruises (completely crazy and certifiably masochistic, but still doable, and Tharlaigh had done some equally insane stuff to maintain pretenses) but more specialized causes of harm like poison, monster bites and stings, not to mention infections and their healing processes (potions included) were much harder to replicate. So, he was just one person, hiding who he truly was.

But why?

Short of asking outright or figuring out exactly who he was, there were any number of reasons. Criminal history, want of privacy, for the amusement of annoying him… Sheik frowned, wondering why he was even so worked up about the Hero. As he'd stipulated previously, Hero was alright, can be trusted in a fight, though perhaps not in the same room as Zelda, but even then she could fight Hero if the need came up. So then…?

Because he's a mystery, like her.

Sheik snorted. Yes. He shuffled through the papers on his desk, pulling out other more extensive notes on Garden Girl. Why did she bother sneaking in and out of the castle just to work, anyway? It was clear she wasn't being paid (the accounts matched up) she wasn't stealing anything of value (again, accounts, and treasury, and he'd left a number of jewelled pins around to see if any would go missing (they did but none because of her)), she always wore that same borrowed ill-fitting dress (didn't she own anything else?) and was gone within a day or two.

Why hadn't he chased her before?

Because she wasn't as close a threat as Hero, not to mention he'd always been bogged by reports when he'd noticed her outside doing things.

What reports?

Reports that usually had to do with Hero.

Always?

...That was a fair point. Was it always? Sheik thought back, picking at a crevice in his right cheekbone, (autumn harvest, Hero had left after delivering some goods, after the potatoes Hero had arrived with frost-bitten hands, and hadn't Hero disappeared in the castle, that time Tharlaigh had followed him around, where only a few corridors away Garden Girl was in a courtyard fixing a fence?) and it did sort of match up. Now, one did not always lead to the other; Garden Girl came around more often than Hero, but they overlapped enough that… were they linked?

Linked. Heh. Hehahah.

Why was that funny?

Sheik frowned. It was obvious. Why was he questioning such an obvious-

He glanced down at his papers, the pen in his hand, dripping red and scratching the words shut up shut up SHUT UP SHUT UP in great gashing lines.

"Shit."

Sheik woke with a great gulping gasp, eyes rolling back in his sockets with the effort of dragging himself out of the spell. The cut on his hand was seeping through the bandages of silk Midna had tied around it, finally giving under the constant digging of his fingernails.

Sheik's cousin sighed, but looked happy nonetheless. "You know, father once described memory reading like tug of war. You're slipping, scarface."

That he was. He may be pulling back, digging his metaphysical heels in and holding on for all he was worth, but once he lost purchase all the memories did was burn him raw as they scraped through the grip of his mind. It would be so much easier to let it go and let her unravel those scrolled instances of his life, see anything she wanted.

Except it might let Vhighew go free.

Sheik tested his bonds (still no, but his arms were losing some feeling so that might help him), ground his teeth into his gag (if he made his jaw stiff would it be painful enough to help?) and watched Midna mix more potions, which would probably make all his small earnest attempts at rebellion absolutely pointless.

He just had to pick the ropes, then. Try and choose the memories before she could, and keep buying time.

He hoped Zelda and Lin would hurry up.

-.-'-.-'-.-

The Triforce and its relationship to time differed with each piece.

Zelda, with Wisdom, it seemed to be about… knowing. What was fair, what was right, what made sense. Now often none of these matched, and to find the balance was her purpose. Understanding and compassion was paramount lest she became a calculating shell of a human being, or worse, a walking talking book of law, and for that she needed her best friend and counterweight. The fact that he had not joined her for lunch should have been a warning bell; it was a certainty when Lin came looking for him as well, saying he hadn't shown up for training.

Tharlaigh was gone.

She went to the Temple of Time as soon as she could, which was only once she had done her duties as Princess. She touched the altar of the Goddesses before the Door of Time, and from there she tilted her mind back, looking for Tharlaigh. If he had been attacked, or taken, or worse, killed, then the fight would have been noticeable, even by the standards of the darkened streets of the City.

There. An explosion of magic, near dawn, by the eastern towers of the moat. If Zelda remembered correctly some of them had been abandoned, making them easy properties for black market dealers and other unsavoury peoples.

Zelda sent her spell-crafters there to investigate and went in search for Lin, who would undoubtedly be worried sick.

It was a little before sunset by then, and the Princess found her planting a substantial tree in the courtyard.

Zelda blinked at the strange phenomenon. "Aren't chestnuts out of season?"

"Yep," Lin grunted, shovelling some soil onto its roots, stomping it firmly in place.

"Yet it's bearing fruit. And…" she peered at the other leaves, some of which looked rather dead, others the brightest spring green, peeking from the crevices of branches. "Did you manage to do some time magic?"

"Yep," the lady warrior muttered grimly, hopping and stomping round its roots, making sure it was firmly in place, "All four seasons rolled into a single plant. It'll have chestnuts ready to eat, all year long."

"Goodness. This is amazing. Do you think it might grow by four years in one?"

"We'll see in a year, won't we?" she shrugged, before turning away.

"Lin. About Tharlaigh."

The girl almost always garbed in a green tunic turned around, her expression oddly chilled. "Have you found him?"

"No, but I may know what's happened to him by some time tonight. Try not to worry yourself, will you? He has sometimes gone days without telling anyone."

"I guess," was all she said, before going off again.

It was disconcerting, seeing Lin so subdued. She may not have been the most happiest of people, but she'd been so lively, almost childish, and seeing that gone…

Sighing Zelda prayed her spies would hurry up.

They arrived an hour later, almost a full day gone by since Zelda had bid Tharlaigh goodbye for the night. They told her of the remnants of a travel gate, hastily built, collapsed under its own use, and one designed for long distances. Very long, the kind that needed royal permission to build, much less use.

The unease inside her went from a simmer to a boil.

"Goddesses, Tharlaigh."

Clearly the gate hadn't been commissioned by the Sheikah, since there was one right inside the Castle, usually used by himself or Lin when the Princess needed them to go on a long haul mission on a short time-frame. But it must have been used by him, or the altar would not have pointed it out to her, which must mean…

He'd been taken. But by whom? Why?

Then it was obvious. It wasn't their most recent mission but it was certainly the most prominent, the prisoner that they'd brought back encased in a frozen block of time.

Wrapping a cloak over her shoulders and filling a lantern with light only she could see with, Zelda snuck out of her rooms and headed towards the basements of the Temple of Time. As soon as she heaved open the trapdoor, she heard horrendous screaming.

"Stop! Stop please stop stop," and the rest degenerated into incomprehensible wailing.

Zelda rushed down, nearly tripping over the hems of her skirts.

Before the doors were sentries she'd enchanted herself, to keep everyone except the most trusted away, yet they were standing idle. In the room was Lord Zant of Calatia, screaming and very much unfrozen from his crystal prison, and her Hero.

Lin had her hand raised, conducting slowly. "I could do this to your brain. Make your mind dull and broken. I wonder, what kind of old man would you make? The demented kind? The forgetful kind? Maybe I can age it enough that you know you used to be able to do things, things with your mind, but you won't be powerful enough or even remember how. I wouldn't know, I've never done this before."

"STOP PLEASE I BEG YOU I'LL TELL YOU ANYTHING-"

"Who would bother rescuing you? Where would they be?"

"I have a daughter her name is Midnasia, she, she, I don't know where she is, I,"

"Huh, those Madames were right, your age really does show on your neck."

"NO STOP IT YOU MONSTER I SWEAR I DON'T KNOW I DON'T KNOW'-"

"What are you doing?" Zelda demanded, throwing her hood back and blazing her lantern with true light.

She gasped upon seeing Lord Zant's face. It made no sense; one half seemed younger than before, and the other was impossibly old, the right side drooping in folds of wrinkled skin, age spots peppering the jutted outlines of his bones, and the eye, buried deep in the bruised socket was clouded blind with time.

"Help me! Help me, please!" the prisoner wept, dropping to his knees and scrabbling at the near transparent wall of frozen time. One of his hands was knobbled and frail, so weathered it belonged to a redead. "I swear, I s-swear I don't, I don't,"

"Lin," Zelda whispered, queasy and disturbed, "What have you done?"

"Nothing he doesn't deserve," she said, before adding loudly, "Hypocrisy suits you, Lord Bastard. And hope I find him soon, or you're stuck that way."

"No! No please no I haven't done anything-"

Zelda followed Lin out, boiling over with horror and outrage, unable to articulate the sheer magnitude of Lin's wrongdoing.

Which may have been fortuitous, since as soon as they rounded the corner Lin threw up all over one sentry's stone feet. Her horrid retching was mostly drowned out by Lord Zant's mewling cries, but the shudders of her body let Zelda know that Lin was suffering immensely.

Good. What she'd done was inexcusable.

"What were you thinking?"

"That Sheik's been kidnapped and that was my most likely lead." she coughed, and retched some more.

"You couldn't have possibly known that for sure!"

"Then why are you here?"

Zelda was not about to admit that Lin had a point. "That is besides the point. Such powerful time magic shouldn't be-"

Lin's barking laugh was bleak. "Time magic. Calling it time magic is like calling a face a mask. It's deeper than that. It's ahoorugh-"

Zelda sighed and started stroking Lin's back, the puddle of puke widening. "Oh, Lin. What am I going to do with you?"

She coughed, leaning on her knees, breathing heavily. "I don't remember eating that…"

The Princess rolled her eyes. "That was something I really wanted to know."

"Do you think that chunky bit is steak or-"

"I'm in the perfect position to tip you forward into that," Zelda pointed out, turning her hand of comfort into one of warning.

"The fact I could say I had a puke-fight with Princess Zelda would make it worth it."

There was a contemplative beat, and Zelda retracted. "Seriously. What am I going to do with you."

"Send me out to find him?" she suggested, gathering phlegm loudly and spitting it into the rapidly stinking soup of stomach contents and bile, "You've got an idea or a guess, don't you?"

"I'll let you know once you clean this mess up."

"But Zel,"

"You tortured a prisoner under my protection, Lin!"

"It's not torture if I didn't hurt him!"

The Princess pointed the way they'd come, her voice flat as a rocky horizon. "He was screaming like a reign of keese."

The Hero had the nerve to pout. "Destroying his pride or vanity doesn't count."

"Can you actually promise me that you can reverse what you've done to him?"

The uncomfortable pause was basically a confession, made more damning by said man's sobbing in the background. "With some practice?"

"Lin!"

"Alright, fine, I'll clean up my puke. Then what?"

"You are going to your room until my spell-crafters can tell me what exactly has happened to Tharlaigh."

Lin's jaw dropped. "Wait. Are you grounding me? No!"

"Yes."

"But-"

"Bucket and mop, now! Then room! Or no information about his kidnapping!"

"You're such a mother!" Lin yelled, storming up the basement stairs.

"Only because you make me!"

Yes, Sheik is counting on those two to rescue him. Obviously he is concerned.

Hope you enjoyed!

Regards,

S.S.