Bring me to Light

Again, apologies for the gaps between this, and the next chapter (especially for the fact that it has now been a month).
Here're the next two. Enjoy!

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Minutes to midnight

Link closed his eyes against the blinding electric blue light of the warping ray, familiar with the sensation of being lowered to the ground by an unseen force but still unnerved by it. And Gods it hurt your eyes when you had just spent the last quarter of an hour in the almost twilight quality of the chamber of the Sages.

Nabooru was awakened. All the Sages had now lent their power to him. Next stop was Ganon…great.

The Hylian sighed as his feet touched the stone warp pad, waiting until he was sure the light had faded to open his eyes, finding that it was now sunset.

He lifted an eyebrow. He had spent the entire day in the temple? My, didn’t time fly when you were having ‘fun’.

The Hylian looked around, eyes scanning the golden sand, instinctively searched for Sheik, realising after a moment that his lover wasn’t going to be coming to help him…neither was the fake Sheik . He had made quite sure that they were driven off by that kiss…which, in retrospect, wasn’t a good idea because it now meant that he was completely and totally alone.

Wearily, he cast his eyes across the landscape unfolded in front of him, wondering if he was to go to Ganondorf straight away, or try and find the Princess as Sheik had once mentioned he would have to meet her, or whether he was to rest in preparation for the fight against Ganon. It was fortunate then, that something swooped low over Link’s head. The blonde ducked, drawing the bow and arrow a second later, aiming at the source of the overly loud flapping...and his jaw dropped in a combination of disbelief and horror.

Fluttering to keep itself airborne a few metres ahead of him was the owl he had last seen when he was ten years old.

Kaeporea Gaeborea? Was that its name? He couldn’t remember, but then, he wasn’t sure if he had ever truly found out in the first place. All he knew was that every time he had seen the large, almost lumbering frame of the owl, he had tried to run the other way, afraid of having to endure one of its long, rambling speeches which told him exactly what he already knew, again. Either that or he had ran from the prospect of being carried through the air again by sharp talons, dangling from the underside of an owl, thousands of feet up, only to be dumped unceremoniously on the roof of Impa’s house in Kakariko village.

He remembered vaguely that that’s where the sense of déjà vu had come from after cleansing the Shadow Temple.

The owl, for a change, wasn’t saying anything, but clutched in its talons was a rolled up parchment.

Link reached out slowly, firmly taking hold of the paper and with a hoot the owl released it and flew away, but not before Link caught sight of a band around its leg that he had never noticed before. A golden band embossed with the Triforce…he was a servant of the Royal Family…which explained why it had followed him when he was a child.

Shaking his head to focus on more pressing issues, Link slid the velvet ribbon holding the parchment closed off, opening the letter:

‘To the Hero of Time…Link,

My apologies for not meeting you face to face since your rise to your role as the Hero of Time, but the situation has not allowed it thus far. For me to reveal myself to Hyrule before this time would have been a grave mistake on my part, for times are dangerous and my presence would jeopardise your quest whilst you were awakening the sages.

With the cleansing of the Spirit Temple and the awakening of the final stage however, comes the herald for the time to cleanse Hyrule as a whole.

I imagine that following your cleansing of the temple, you are weary. As such, I ask you to take the night to rest and prepare yourself for the events that tomorrow will bring.

I shall meet you in the Temple of Time at dawn. Do not worry about travelling back across Hyrule, for I have left you with a song that will allow you to enter the temple directly.

I hope that from Sheik’s tuition, you will be able to understand the sheet music below.

I look forwards to our reuniting.

Yours Truly,

Princess Zelda’

Link lifted his head, eyes scanning the music at the bottom…the Prelude of Light. His eyes shifted away from the song a second later to re-read one specific word, over and over again.

Sheik.

Biting his lip, the Hylian folded the parchment up and placed it inside his tunic before wandering over to the temple, entering the entrance hall and settling himself in a corner to sleep.

A nearby torch flickered warmly and Link curled up to it, looking for some warmth in the cooling temple before pulling out the parchment and re-reading that one noun over and over again.

Sheik.

It was just one word, just two little syllables and five little symbols. He wondered how something so small could make your heart ache so much.

Wishing he had something, anythingthat belonged to Sheik to allow him to believe he was here with him, holding him, Link curled himself into a ball, wrapping arm around himself as a hollow mockery of his lover as he drifted to sleep.

He dreamt that night of Sheik, and though it was unsurprising, he couldn’t shake off the feeling of shock in his dream that Sheik was there but…the Sheikah could neither speak, nor see, nor hear. He stood at a point in space that seemed both a few feet away and hundreds of miles, for every time Link’s fingertips reached out to brush the other man’s face, he met thin air instead.

Eventually he stepped back, trying to take in the situation, noting that the moon was rising behind the Sheikah and as his eyes traced the moon’s ascent, Sheik’s formerly stiff arms snapped up, left arm pointing straight up, the other just a few more degrees north-west. The moon had stopped behind him and Link took a few more steps back to take in the full picture as Sheik’s red eyes opened, staring at him mournfully.

And Link suddenly realised that moon was not the moon. It was a clock face…and the position of Sheik’s arms were not directions of north and north-west. They were displaying a time.

Minutes to midnight.

--

Sheik paced around the small kitchen of his home, watching the moon as it began to lower in the night’s sky. When dawn broke, that would be it. The end of any possibility to see Link again.

Forever.

Fingers running idly along a spare tunic Link had left draped untidily over a kitchen chair, he pushed away suddenly, cursing himself for ever having allowed himself to fall for the Hylian.

Everyone knew that both he and Sheik were just tools for the greater good…he knew what would happen eventually and he still let himself do it...and it was tearing him apart. No doubt it was having the same effect on Link too…he hoped it wasn’t for his lover’s sake but…this was Link.There was no way he wouldn’t be suffering.

And it was his, Sheik’s, fault. If he had kept his distance. If he had pushed Link away and not laughed or smiled at his jokes and mannerisms…it would have hurt Link at the time but…not like this, because the Hylian wouldn’t be losing anything.

It was no use running over ifs and buts and however now though. The damage was already done. He just hoped that at the moment at least, Link was sleeping and that he wasn’t enduring a dream like he had that night.

A disturbing dream in which he had been bound and gagged by an invisible power, his arms jerked around like a puppet to convey a message to a horrified Link….a message he didn’t want to convey.

How disturbingly similar to real life that was.

Sheik turned and slammed the door open suddenly, pacing out into a drizzling rain, staring up at a black-clouded sky. An ill omen to be sure. His eyes strayed across to the stables where Epona and Thara rested, having made their own way home from the desert.

Home. Someone actually considered this place home…but Sheik never would as long as Link wasn’t here with him. Without Link the cottage was just a building…a shell that he used for shelter and to keep objects in.

There was no fire in the hearth this morning. He didn’t see the point. He never really felt the cold like Link did so the fire had only ever been on for him…He longed to see Link one last time, to tell him that he loved him, to say his goodbyes…but that would defeat the point of disappearing.

Looking though…he could do that, right? There was no harm in just watching someone. He had done it before…pre-Link he had watched over the Gerudo Valley every now and again, keeping an eye on the imprisoned Hylian’s development from boy to man.

So…he could do it again, right? For old time’s sake, for one last glance at the only person he would ever love…for after this, he would hide away and shut himself off from the world and all the people in it. Striding towards the stable, he knew he shouldn’t really. It would not be in his own interests to watch his lover as Zelda made him believe that she had been the mysterious Sheikah all along. For the good of Hyrule.

But…as long as he saw Link for one last time, he didn’t care.

He threw the door to the stable open, rousing Thara, mounting him without waiting to put a saddle on him and spurring him into a trot instantly. He had to be there to see Link off.

For one last time.

--

Sheik rode hard and fast down the mountain path he would usually guide the horses down slowly, eyes flicking up every few seconds to check the time of day. Zelda had told Link to meet her at dawn, meaning that he had probably an hour to get there. The moon had already disappeared from the sky. He didn’t ease up on Thara until he saw the castle walls come into view, and even then it was only a fraction that he let off the beast, still riding at a dangerous pace.

The drawbridge came into sight clearly within quarter of an hour and he slowed down fully, dismounting from Thara in an alcove in the castle walls where he wouldn’t be noticed, leaving the horse to collapse into a grateful heap on the floor.

Eyes checking the sky almost ritualistically now, he crept inside the walls of the castle, climbing onto the roof of the outermost building of the town and clambering over rooftops to reach the buildings nearest the temple of time. At least this way he would see Zelda entering, assuming she was not yet here. He doubted she would be…Zelda hated seeing what had become of her hometown, never mind what had happened to the castle and so like everyone else in Hyrule, she avoided this place like the plague.

A sudden scream, high and unearthly caught Sheik’s attention, informing him that someone was walking through the town centre…hopefully someone who had the wit to run from the re-deads gathered in the town square. Sheik guessed from the faint taps of boot on stone, they did.

Zelda burst into the quiet garden surrounding the temple of time a second later, looking exceedingly harried…an expression that very few people had seen on Sheik himself and he shook his head. Zelda still hadn’t learnt to hide her emotions even when she thought no-one was around. He hoped that she hadn’t shown that around Link, or else the Hylian would be well aware that the Sheik he saw wasn’t his real lover.

As the disguised princess passed beneath Sheik’s perch, he flattened himself against the roof, hoping to avoid her seeing him. She didn’t and instead she simply walked past to sit on the steps of the temple, awaiting Link. Rolling his eyes at her lack of discipline, Sheik checked the sky again…though it was nearly imperceptible through thick layers of cloud he could just about make out the faint orange glow of sunrise.

Link should be here any second and Sheik shuddered at the cold wind that suddenly ran through him. If it was indeed, the wind.

As if prompted, a strip of blue appeared in the sky. A thin beam of light that shot down into the temple and widened gradually, the faint notes of an ocarina being carried on the wind, growing stronger as the ray grew. A yellow string of lights circled around the beam. Red eyes traced the movement, watching as the yellow orbs filtered into the temple, the blue light fading soon after.

Zelda disappeared into the temple almost instantly and Sheik rolled his eyes at her behaviour once again before leaping from the rooftop, hurrying to the door and hiding behind it to watch the scene unfolding inside.

--

Link blinked against the light of the temple, orientating himself, looking around at the grey walls that he hadn’t seen for months.

This was it. He was to meet princess Zelda here but…looking around, there wasn’t anyone present. The temple was silent, the only noise that he could hear being the wind whistling outside.

And then footsteps.

A slim figure hovered in the doorway before edging into the main chamber of the temple, light washing over…

“Sheik?!”

‘Sheik’ shook his head, a pained slowness to the motions.

“Then…” Link’s brow furrowed, anger rising in his chest “didn’t you get the message in the spirit temple?! It still stands you know.”

“Link…hear me out.”

The blonde man raised an eyebrow. “Why?”

“Because I have something important to tell you.”

Link waved a hand. “Fine, have at it. But make it quick.”

“You have overcome many hardships and awakened six sages and now you have a final challenge…a showdown with Ganondorf the King of Evil…”

Link nodded “I know this already.”

“Before that I have things I want to tell only to you…”

The Hylian lifted an eyebrow sceptically.

“Please listen…Link…you know that Ganondorf holds the Triforce of power as…the realSheik would have told you…and therefore you must have worked out that it is you who holds the Triforce of courage…”

A nod.

“And the other, who holds the Triforce of wisdom is the seventh sage,” ‘Sheik’s’ voice dropped “who is destined to be the leader of them all.”

His right hand, a shade or two paler than usual, lifted, the other bracing against his wrist as three faint triangles faded into sight onto the back of his hand, the lower left section glowing brighter than the others. The light from the triangle grew to such intensity that Link had to shield his eyes from the golden rays and he waited until he felt the heat from the rays fade to lower his arm slowly.

He jerked, mouth falling open with shock at the sight of the young woman in front of him not understanding how she had been…Sheik, a moment ago.

She gave him a pained smile at his shock.

“Princess?”

The young woman nodded. “I apologise for meeting you disguised as Sheik now…as well as in the temple but it was necessary to hide from Ganondorf,” she bowed her head “forgive me.”

“…on one condition…”

“Anything.”

“Tell me where Sheik is…and get him to come back to me…”

Pink lips parted and she turned her head away as if in pain.

“Sheik has already left Hyrule to go into hiding.”

--

Sheik stood in the doorway quietly, hidden in the shadows, listening and watching as Zelda spoke to Link, eventually unmasking herself.

He studied Link’s expression carefully as it changed from impatience to shock to worry, all the while wanting nothing more than to either run to him...or run away. Anything so long as he didn’t have to watch all those hurtful, guilt-inspiring emotions write themselves across his partner’s handsome face.

Impatience, shock, worry…and now one final, heart-wrenching expression.

Link’s mouth had fallen open again to take quick, thin, gasp-like breaths. His head had fallen, open eyes searching the floor sightlessly under a furrowed brow, the knowledge that he would never see his lover again leaving the Hylian crippled by emotion.

That sapphire blue gaze wandered, sight blurring as tears formed and fell, a single choked sob escaping the hero as his world crumbled. By just one sentence.

Sheik felt his heartbreak. Actually feltthe exact moment that a pain so strong it was physical ripped through his chest. His heart felt crushed, constrained, constricted, beating weakly in a hole that had suddenly formed. A hole that couldn’t be filled again…if he obeyed the rules.

He didn’t know how he could feel that hole in his chest, it didn’t exist…but he knew how to fill it. That he had to…for he couldn’t carry on his own life without Link…knowing that he had caused the other man so much distress. It would be pointless to live without Link, having felt what he did when the Hylian was around, knowing that he was the one who made his life…a life, and not just an existence.

He understood that he had to wipe that distraught expression from Link’s face…and the reason behind it.

Knowing it was irrational to even think such a thing as what he was about to do, for anyone, never mind a Sheikah, a servant of the royal family, a tool for the greater good, Sheik straightened behind the door.

Hyrule and the Princess be damned. Because Link needed him.

--

The figure burst from the shadows of the doorway at such speed that Link couldn’t have hoped to reacted in time even if he was alert. Not the dejected state of sorrow and loss that pervaded him now.

As such, he felt no fear, or panic...or anything really as the creature latched onto him, limbs entangling him, trapping him, ready to kill him or drag him back to the Dark Lord.

Except that it wasn’t doing either of this things…it was merely clinging to him, more softly now, lifting a blonde head to meet blue eyes with red.

“Sheik?”

The name was barely audible, little more than a hopeful, wary whisper, as if anything louder would scare him away.

A single nod.

A heart-stopping moment of realisation.

A lone breath escaped Link, the situation crash down on to him..

Lips were crushed against lips in a second, white mask barely moved out of the way in time. Link’s hands were on Sheik’s chest, feeling, testing.

Hard and smooth and flat…just how he remembered it.

Hands slid lower, arms tightening on his lover, holding him and tears were running freely from Link’s eyes, relief and gratitude flooding over him at the return of his love. His reallove.

He felt his spirit soar in that moment of connection, having spent a time that was so short but seemed so long away from this man. This person who had brought him back from the brink of destruction.

Sheik had saved him over and over again, in one way or another…how could he live without someone who did that without question? And from the way Sheik’s hands were gripping at him…he wasn;t the only one who needed his lover to survive.

Sheik gasped, eyes widening slightly at the feeling of Link’s hands on his backside, gripping tightly and he pushed back into them, letting him know that it really was him. After all, no impersonator of him could know him to be this intimate. This deeply in love. This comfortable in the arms of another, all his faith placed in a single person. His only faith.

He broke away from Link’s lips, gasping for breath and burying his face in Link’s neck, arms folding about Link’s back.

He could only feel joy and an overpoweringly protective swell in his chest, a desire to keep his partner safe and well and happy.

“Gods I’ve missed you so much,” Link whispered into Sheik’s ear, eyes closing as he held him. “That’s pathetic after just two days, right?”

“If that’s the case I’m just as pathetic as you are.”

Link turned his head to rest it against Sheik’s shoulder, comfortable and at ease once again…but only in this embrace.

“That’s alright then.”

Sheik smiled into Link’s neck, as contented as his partner…and then reality jerked him back into the real world. He pulled away from Link gently, hand reaching for his in reassurance as he turned to face Zelda.

The Princess stood silently near the door, her expression one of sorrow and guilt as she looked at the two men standing before her.

Two words managed to find their way loose from her tightened throat.

“I’m sorry.”
And that was all it took to release it.

“I’m so sorry…I didn’t realise that you were….if I had I would never have done anything to try and separate you, I, I just wanted to protect…”

“My lady…”

Her head dropped, hand running through neatly tied hair, loosening long, gold strands.

“Princess…”

Still no response. Reluctantly, Sheik released Link’s hand, pulling his mask up as he walked towards the princess as she trembled, guilt physically wracking her entire body.

“I’m so sorry…” she whispered, and Sheik slowly lifted a hand to her chin, lifting her head to look her in the eye.

“Zelda… both Link and I understand, even if we don’t agree with what you did. You were merely trying to save your kingdom and its people…that is not wrong. It was for the greater good,” his hand dropped away from Zelda’s face “Something I seem to be unable to serve as of late.”

“But there’s no harm done, right? To me and Sheik, or Hyrule” Link asked, taking a couple of steps towards the two other blondes.

Zelda nodded “Yes. We are safe, I think…”

“No, we are not. We need to defeat Ganondorf. Today.” Sheik stated, meeting Link’s gaze purposefully and the hero nodded resolutely.

“Yes, the dark age ruled by Ganondorf must end. The six sages will open the sealed door and lure Ganondorf back into the sacred realm and I shall seal the door to the realm from this world.”

Her eyes scanned the room, breaking from the two men’s gazes as if embarrassed by what she was about to say.

“Link…I must ask you to lend me your courage once more…please…protect my whilst I play my part.”

“Of course.”

“I have something for you…a weapon that can penetrate Ganondorf’s defences when all else does not work.”

She stepped forwards, her hands stretched out in front of her, separated and parallel to each other as she closed her eyes in concentration.

Golden light appeared between her hands, coursing like electricity, twining into a vague shape as light surrounded the princess. The light twisted and contracted, forming long, slender shafts, tipped by quills and slender, golden arrow heads.

Zelda handed them to Link, stepping back a second later to allow him to examine the white, inscribed shafts of the arrows, the pure white fletching at the end.

“These are light arrows. You will need to use them when…”

The ground trembled abruptly and the three blondes frowned at the tremor as it faded.

“What?..”

And the shaking returned again, stronger this time, like an earthquake forming beneath them, an almost deafening rumbling over taking the temple.

Large chunks of marble blocks were vibrated from the walls, mortar cracking and releasing the stones as the floor below fractured, a spider web of cracks spilling over the floor.

Panes of clear and stained glass shattered in the windows, iron bindings snapping at the velocity of the shuddering.

“That rumbling,” Zelda gasped, casting about “it can’t be!”

She stumbled as the ground beneath her cracked and Sheik grabbed her, pulling her from danger as the ground opened up and crumbled.

Link saw it before either of the other two did though.

Giant panes of what looked like glass descending towards the Sheikah and the princess as the temple grew dark, the rumbling shaking the spiritual stones on the altar loose of their fixings.

They fell to the floor, shattering like fine china.

“Sheik! Zelda! Move!”

They couldn’t respond in time, even as Sheik jumped back, a panel of crystalline light formed behind him, others joining a second later until he was fully encased in a large, solid, crystal, its clear panes glinting black.

Zelda was set beside him in a separate crystal, this one a faint pink-red hue and she placed small hands against the front panel, searching for a seam, a way out as panic formed on elegant features.

Link ran to the crystals, standing in front of Sheik who desperately motioned for him to aid Zelda.

The Hylian rolled his eyes, turning to the princess, running his hands over the crystal, slamming them into the hard surface in frustration.

The prisons were made by black magic…the captives would not be freed until the creator was defeated.

“Princess Zelda…” a deep voice drawled, the booming strains echoing around the trembling temple, as if the building itself were quaking beneath the wrath in the voice.

“You foolish traitor..” a noise that might have been a sigh or a grunt followed “I commend you for avoiding my pursuit for seven long years. But...you let your guard down, just as I knew you would if I allowed this kid and his…boyfriend to roam Hyrule.”

Link growled loudly.

A dark chuckle. “Oh yes boy, I’m quite aware of your relationship with this little Sheikah trinket. My servants have been most helpful in sending me information on you, though I must say…you took your time, didn’t you?”

Inside the black crystal, Sheik snarled.

“How sweet a couple you make, even if that couple is twisted and perverted in its nature.”

Bandaged fists pounded on crystal walls loudly.

With a sound like bones being cracked, Sheik screamed, an agony filled noise wrenched from his gut as his body arched backwards, falling limp and still.

“Sheik!”

A moment later and Zelda was in a similar state, a look of shock frozen onto her face.

“My only mistake was to slightly underestimate the power of you, kid.”

The crystals rose from the floor in unison and Link could do nothing but watch in horror as the Princess and his lover floated out of reach.

“But no…It was not the power of you I misjudged; it was the power of the Triforce of courage.”

“Ganondorf! You…”

“But,” the drawling voice of the dark lord continued unabated “with the Triforce of wisdom that Zelda has...when I obtain these two pieces of the Triforce…”

A pause, and the next words were whispered fervently “Then I will become the true leader of the world!”

“If you wish to rescue Zelda and your boyfriend, come to my castle, boy.”

A laugh.

The same laugh that he had heard all those years ago when Navi had been crushed in Ganondorf’s hand, the same laugh as when he cried at being handed over to the Gerudo women, the same laugh as when he gave a terrified squeal at fifteen years old when that group of Gerudo women pounced on him with the intentions of stealing every scrap of innocence he had left.

It faded quickly…but not quickly enough, bile rising into his mouth, the taste vile…but nothing compared to Ganondorf’s gut-churning laugh.

As the crystals containing Zelda and Sheik faded out of sight, dragging them to Ganondorf’s lair, Link turned in the temple.

The Hylian wandered towards the altar, knowing they were gone and collapsing upon it. Falling to his knees among the shards of sacred stones, surrounding him in an incandescent halo, Link screamed, fist slamming onto the black marble of the altar.

He had found Sheik…and lost him again so quickly. And this time, he didn’t know if he would be alive when he found him again.