dark nights keep on falling, my lonely heart keeps calling;
title: What After Love [chapter 1.6/?]
pairing: Link/Sheik, Link/Zelda
rating: PG-13
summary: Where does love exist in this tunnel vision place? The city night doesn't give any answers, just looks back at you, waiting for your next move.
this chapter: Link, Sheik, and Zelda spend time together, and despite whatever nagging thoughts, whatever old feelings, whatever jealousies, might linger in the background, they find that they all get on quite well.
note: hahahahahaha /kills self forever/
• previous chapter
• 1.1 | 1.2 | 1.3 | 1.4 | 1.5
☆CHAPTER 1.6
“Y’know what this fucker said?” Raven asked, motioning rough to Sheik.
Zelda looked toward Sheik, eyes measured. “What?” she asked. Something in her eyes was on level with Sheik’s; they looked at each other without decor, as siblings might- as people who had spent hours and hours side by side might.
“He sed, ‘Everything’s forgiven when you got money,’” Raven said, smiling with a strange sweet edge that Link had never seen him put on before. “Can ya believe that shit?”
Zelda paused; her expression didn’t change. “Well, that seems about right,” she answered, simply, “That’s the way things are, in this world.” It was so strange- her voice was petal-soft but something about it was solid and steady.
“Of course,” Sheik said, smiling in his posture and folding his arms, “We’re not such thieves to steal the air we breath on.” He was again the shadow messenger, the trapeze artist with bloody words and a talent for incision; nobody but Zelda noticed that he seemed to have broken out of a strange trance.
Her eyes were conciliatory; she said, “We’re just thieves enough to breath it.”
“If that’s your mind,” he replied, voice fluid, with a shrug. “And how was your trip?”
“It was fine,” Zelda answered, and it was funny- there was no “oh, I’m so excited to see you,” no bloated endearments, no endearments at all- they seemed like they were picking up a conversation after five minutes’ separation, seemed to shift naturally into each other’s line of thought.
By now Link had snapped out of his trance and was feeling creepy and dumb for staring at her so long; she turned back to him, he started. “I’m Link,” he said, as though that hadn’t been said, then backtracked, trying to figure out what he should say; “I’m- Sheik’s friend.”
Her expression shifted subtly; she looked toward Sheik, and Raven interjected. “Yeah, these two shitheads’re real buddy-buddy,” he said, rolling his eyes, then gestured to them pointedly. “Should be fuckin’ illegal.”
Zelda’s head tipped a bit; short and musical, like a curious little girl. “Are you close?” she asked. Something about her voice was compelling, and Link caught his breath on its coldness.
He paused. “Yeah,” he said, with a smile, glancing toward Sheik who was carefully marking the gypsy lines of his standing, “Sheik was the first person I met in the city.”
“They even got playdates and shit,” Raven said, still with that sweet leaning, smile and eyes angled blade-pretty down on Zelda; he nodded in the general direction of Sheik and Link. “Link gets to stay over Sheik’s and fuckin’ everythin’.”
There was no comeback, as might’ve been expected; Sheik’s darkness just contracted, a jealous feeling just whispered into his limbs. Zelda, again, was the only one who noticed; and, seeming put-off by the news, looked to Link again, threw him off-guard again.
It was hard to gauge her; the conclusions that seemed to be made in those eyes were so far-off, so distant that he couldn’t even guess at them. She looked shortly at Sheik, and then to Link again, saying, “You’ve known each other for long?”
“Oh- uhm- a couple of months?” Link said, as though he was asking himself; he searched for the time in the back of his mind, but it was understandable that he couldn’t find it in a clear line. The images and colors were so strong on the heart that they weighed down logic with a closed fist. Occulted understanding with their amnesiac magic.
Then Sheik laughed, the dark edge of it sliding out between fine lines; he said, eyes fixing on Zelda, on the center of light like a blade poised for viewing, “To ask questions hidden behind clouds- someone may wonder what light you’re climbing at; when language travels with such hesitance, one must wonder what blade lingers at its heels. You seem to’ve learned a bit about politics on your trip.”
Zelda didn’t pause; she took every word as it was being said, let it steady before she spoke. “Or perhaps I’ve just always understood what is impolitic,” she answered, kinda speaking to the keeper at the gate.
Sheik seemed satisfied with that; or perhaps he was satisfied with having deflected her interest. His riddles seemed like familiar dogs to Zelda, it seemed she held a cryptic hand without wonderment or fear. Link wondered if anybody noticed what he noticed- but the night was still a pretty young thing, and everybody was looking at Zelda with eyes and minds focused on her light and not her shadow.
Raven seemed full of it, seemed like a satisfied cat lookin’ over Carnivore Alley; his mouth was a dangerously sharp, dangerously honeyed line over the cigarette he was working on, and he prattled on about this and that with Zelda, talking about everybody he’d love to insult and everything she’d missed. People interjected here and there; Link didn’t get a word in, but instead stood by Sheik, talking, barely watching it all go down.
“We should go and see another movie,” Link said, quite casually, words bubbling one up from the other, arms swinging. “We should go tonight! Maybe- ? I think we could do that...”
Sheik paused; thrown-off guard for a moment, coming up from under the thick liquid stillness of his blackened, inward feeling. The surface was shining before his eyes. Came up for a breath, said with a slight shrug, muscle laughing, “As you like.”
“What’s out, though? I have a feeling none of it’s going to be as funny as The Leviathan,” Link answered, all boyish grin.
Sheik paused; then, shifted, and returned the grin in a matter of syllables. “Perhaps we can film our own movie.”
Link laughed. “I think Raven should be the leading lady,” he answered.
“Of course,” Sheik responded, coolly, “A girl without family is lost in the city, her heart a city stricken with poverty, expecting immigrants, all her future before her.”
“And then she falls in love,” Link said.
Sheik nodded. “She falls in love with a dashing doctor who specializes in heart-attacks; giving them, that is, on a government-regulated basis. They must defeat the head priest of the heart attack, but, as we all know- that is almost unattainable.”
“Man, that’s tragic,” Link agreed.
“Of course. Endangering the temple by night, surprising the stars, all of those sacrilegious songs that our personal earth is too fast to notice. After an explosion and one or two sweeping violins, love will finally triumph. Then of course we cut to the credits.”
“We should start as soon as possible,” Link said, putting on this fake business-like tone, nodding, eliciting a slight laugh from Sheik.
“I leave it up to you, Sir Director.”
“You’re the producer then, right?”
“The producer is something I’ve always been; my work isn’t seen because I’ve been ever in the hands of incompetent directors,” Sheik answered, with the shine of a smirk in his eye (and was that too daring? he couldn’t keep track of his thoughts any longer).
“I’ll do my best,” Link said, smiling bright and broad, shoulders angled level to Sheik’s.
Sheik’s glance was fugitive; he said, eyes low, “And what shall we do now? Time ahead of us is full, and-” he laughed- “I’m in simply no mood to be forgiven.”
“I dunno,” Link shrugged, breezy, “Do you want to go?”
Sheik rose his eyebrows, tilted his head. “And Zelda?”
“Huh?” Link paused, eyes darting upwards, wondering what he meant; realization dawned on him, and he smiled quizzically. “Oh- well- not that I want to be rude,” he said, swallowing, eyes moving back to Zelda, and then quickly moving back, “If she wants to come, then- yeah, but we’ll see her some other time, right?”
Sheik paused. “Hm,” he nodded. This was something blooming exotic on the tip of his tongue, was poetry his hands could not wrangle into form.
Just then some people came up, two guys dressed in dark terms that Link would probably never be able to relate to, and started to talk politics and philosophy with inward smiles reflecting some kind of disdain. Some kind of impotency; talkin’ bout, does Zelda view the sovereignty as one with the people, and if not, who’s more important? And Zelda answered them in blithe terms, no words wasted, winter white. Her speech was beyond vocabulary, had wisdom powerful like an element in them, but the meaning was cuneiform. You could tell Raven was just itching to say something, but for some reason his tongue was stayed. He just stood there, looking like the old haunt of a cigarette, giving them back a smile that promised a few bruises. They went away after the discussion reached a certain point; the thing was all built on wires and heavily communicated but clipped at the wing. They dint speak to Sheik; Sheik would have just ended up explaining their own blood to them anyway. And that was truth they couldn’t stand to swallow.
Link didn’t understand it either way, he just watched and talked and had a few glasses of champagne whenever somebody came around with a tray. This scene- this scene that Zelda was the center of- was absolutely a world beyond his; he had a childish fascination with it, its movements and colors. In a bit, Raven, Shad, the writer, and the brothers had split from the center and moved toward Link; and Sheik, touching lightly on Link’s wrist as though to tell him it would be only a moment, moved toward Zelda. They spoke to each other quiet, familiar. Link had a feeling that even if he could hear them, he wouldn’t quite be able to understand what they were saying.
“Sheesh, those two fuckin’ faggots,” Raven bit, stubbing out the end of his cigarette in Link’s near-empty champagne glass, shoulders squaring on the defense, “Everywhere ya go it’s a world’a cheap faggots. They’re like fuckin’ rats, they’re everywhere.”
Shad gave one of those soft, polite smiles. “I found it interesting, to a degree,” he said, allowing, “I quite agreed with Zelda’s point of view on the matter.”
Raven scoffed, gave a disdainful eyeroll. “Damn yeah, you fuckin’ agreed with her,” he drawled, “You wanna agree with her all the way into her damn panties, eh? Ya goddamn cretin.”
Shad’s smile turned into a somewhat stumbling laugh, he shook his head as though nothing so impolite would cross the snow of his mind. “Well, I’ll be leaving with the twins soon,” he said, beginning to fold things away, his genteel formality unaffected by the blowing of a champagne night. “Does anyone else need a ride?”
“Where ya goin’?”
“I suppose back home.”
“Bah,” Raven said, waving dismissively, tongue clicking, “Shitheads. So, kid-” turning like a reckless wheel on the phrase and turning to Link, giving him a rough shove- “What’d ya think?”
“Not everyone’s a pervert,” the brothers chimed in seemingly faultless unison.
“-Anymore fuckin’ flack from you two an’ I swear-”
“It seems I’ve appeared in the battling hour,” Sheik said, coming up from anywhere, before at Zelda’s side and all at once at Link’s. “We’ll go now,” he continued, tripping up a tone of careless smiles, gesturing like a general for whomever wanted to follow to do so. They went out, the swarm of them, after Raven, the Lauryn Hill Brothers, and Shad said their goodbyes to Zelda- Raven’s coupled with a threat of happiness, the Brothers’ with their characteristic boredom, Shad’s with a halting kind of pink, somethin’ sad reflecting off his glasses. Then they fell in line, and the group moved like a wave.
Link looked over his shoulder- not knowing whether or not he should make some kind of formal greeting with her- and deciding against all that, smiled at her, wide, bright, cloudy. She took a small note of it, then with a small dip of her head, simply nodded back at him; the only thing that was missing was the crown.
Goodbyes and salutations didn’t assault them as they left, it was all without incident, without public murder; move back along the trail through the wreckage of cream and gold like outcasts of a Roman legion, unaffected and with a backalley triumph. The halls were nearly empty; the elevator was too. When they got in Raven told Link to press the button for the lobby. He did so, and then Sheik pushed the button for the 2nd floor. A private smile was exchanged and the thing went on until they’d formed a Christmas tree of lights; Sheik had a smile in his eyes, Link laughed, Raven was intensely frazzled. “Fucking- kids.”
They split in the lobby. It was just Raven, Link, and Sheik going out through the lobby doors and into the open air, the condensed dark. It was a mean, fresh wind that swept down from the trees, the bare imitation lightposts, to the sidewalk, and Link was dazed by the moment, been half-zombie walkin’ from when they’d gone into the gold-quiet elevator to the forward walk down the cement.
His heart had been swimming around his ears and buzzing in his hands when he had been face-to-face with a dream; but now as he was standing next to Sheik, it was level, and he was calm. “So what did you think?” Raven asked, pushing him by the shoulder again, pushing him forward.
Link gave a thoughtless shrug and smile. “She seems, uhm...- I like her.”
Such a strange carbonation, new thoughts and new roads, new avenues of thought. “Sure you do, e’erybody does. Man, who wantsta be home on a night like this? Let’s see here,” Raven said, pulling Link toward him, giving him a push, hands rough as a father’s, seeming to be in the mood to handle someone badly, “Lemme give you a coupla rupees and you go buy me a pack’a cigs.”
Link stumbled just a little bit but regained his balance, then looked at Sheik with an expression of surprise. “I think this is a day to remember- Raven has money!”
Sheik broke out of his smallness and quiet and looked tired criminal sidelong at both of them. “Truly something,” he permitted.
“Shaddap, both of you. Here,” Raven snapped, tossing a fistful of rupees Link’s way.
Link looked down at the lucky hand he’d just been passed, and then smiled, somewhat shy on it. “Uh- I’ve never bought cigarettes before...?”
“Whaddya mean by that?”
“I don’t really know,” with a bright laugh.
“Come on, kid, every time you buy cigarettes for a great guy you become a little less of a queerbait,” Raven answered, eyebrows slung on a low plane, eyes sliding like a snake’s. And addressing Sheik now- “But can you believe that? First time we see that chick, we gotta blow out after an hour. When can we get her outta all that gaddamn political slime?”
“Who knows? You’d see more life in the underworld; the world of the exalted is such a constant death that it stands completely halted- a bloodless living museum.” Then, pausing, adding sardonically under a short laugh, “But I s’pose it wouldn’t be too poor a thing that she remain a statue just a little while longer.”
Nobody seemed to catch it, it was just a slip of shadow liquid underneath the bright radar lights; Link, looking up toward them, toward the crowded rooftops, commented, “I guess we’ll see her when we see her. It’ll be fun.”
And so on, walking. Now blood and tears instead of milk and honey, but at least it was still bittersweet. As they walked on, slightly aimless, looking for a taxi or not even looking for one, Sheik took note of the breeze and Link walking in it. Even though Link had looked at Zelda with such a fascination, such an abandoned neon, it dawned on Sheik that he did not know what it meant to further the feeling, and simply left it at that. He seemed to have no grasp on the fact that Zelda was a princess, and her time was a commodity dealt in small handfuls. It was childish, simple.
Otherwise, the night had to end sometime. They three took separate taxis, Raven going home cigaretteless (maybe buying some on the way), and Sheik and Link toward Sheik’s house; it seemed easier that way. Link wasn’t exactly distant, but you could tell something was on his mind as he passed the rupees he’d forgotten to return to Raven from finger to finger, green and yellow moving hypnotic, like halcyon summer nights.
The morning was filled with powder pink and white, lazy and soft like any morning is when you’re choosing to wake up, not forced to by some military noise. It wasn’t exactly clear what Link woke up to- the pressure of the strengthening light, the presence of another, the dying and sweet smell of cigarette smoke- but his eyes opened to a kind and blissful marigold sun. Blue and gold, sun and sea where they meet become eternity. He was dazed for a couple of moments, then sensed that Sheik was nearby; he turned, slightly, saw that Sheik was facing away from him, moving in a way that was unusual for him- as though he was rushing away from some mistake...pulling up his face mask with one elegant hand, stubbing out a cigarette into an ash tray with the other.
“Morning,” Link said, smile hazy but immediate; “I forgot to give Raven his money back.”
“I can have it sent, if you’d like,” Sheik offered.
Link sat up. “Yeah, maybe- thanks.”
Slight pause, slim ice edging out under a window pane. “Are you comfortable?” Sheik asked, tone kept cool.
Link didn’t know what he meant for a moment; still didn’t really know, but figured he understood in a vague way. “Yeah,” he said, thumbing at his shirt, scents of an overgrown party stuck the cloth- raspberry and cigarettes- “Pretty much. How come?”
Then the ice fading away; Sheik looked primary and burned against the blue wall but then his demeanor was warm again and he reappeared from a distant shade, touching Link’s leg lightly. “We were called to an audience with Her Highness today.” More on the kidding side, none of the sarcasm that was present like an earthquake wave last night.
Link felt something like nervousness splash in his blood, to his hands, was elated just a bit. “Oh, really?”
Sheik nodded, looking at Link like a parent would a child, and continued, fingers like bird’s wings as he spoke. “Hm; I’ll arrange it. Of course an amount of pretense is necessary; perhaps I can lend you a tuxedo.”
Link watched him with a lopsided grin as he got up. “Or a black turtleneck.” He could tell by the look Sheik tossed back to him that he had the intention of smiling; Link washed up in the bathroom (on the small side, its layout a bit unfamiliar) while Sheik talked on the phone in the hall. All elements of film noir in his secretive posture, curved with quiet fatality. He did not have the regal air that somebody might put on when dealing in such things, was rather more alone than that.
So after some time spent quiet they were out in the morning, with the car sitting out front, driver jamming on the horn because he didn’t feel to wait too long. The sunlight was strong and white and the air around them still had that untouched feeling, prosperous, wet. Autumn chill was falling into winter territory and they shuffled in next to each other; Link noticed that the driver seemed to already know where to go, and he was stonelike.
And they started out. The long empty roads from where Sheik lived, yawning schoolkids, black leather Tuesday feel in the way the light breathed so pink. Coffee stands and workers all empty. Sheik didn’t talk much, seemed to ruminate on the view that passed by, for all outside eyes looking like a child raised up to be a soldier, imbued with impersonal duty. He really did look like somebody’s last descendant, like he fulfilled the ravaged desert that he came from. Eyes out for a vengeance, but it was all softer than that. Sheik guiding them through the perilous city.
“We’ll stop here,” he said, leaning forward to the driver, hand bold against the sleek jet upholstery.
They stopped at a newspaper stand; Link didn’t know why, Sheik wasn’t the type for something like the news. A man stood by in a long green coat; he saw Link and must have pinned him as somebody who could help, because he asked for a couple of rupees, to promote “prayers of peace, of love,” in the city. Link thought it was a fair request, and an important one, so he fished in his pocket for some stray rupees. “May the spirit of love descend upon you,” the man said, through his teeth either a saint or a conman, while Sheik turned away from the newsstand and to Link and the car.
“Praying for love?” Sheik asked, handing Link a steaming cup of coffee. It was typical Sheik, he seemed to know everything, from top to bottom, and had the most mysterious sources.
“Oh,” Link said, like he had been found out, and then shrugged, light skipping off his eyes. “I guess so.”
Sheik turned his head, seeming to consider it. “Could money buy such prayers?- And where do prayers go, but into the blaze of unknown things- of ‘tomorrow,’ of ‘perhaps,’ a long and fierce sort of weariness?”
“Hm. I guess it’s important, though, to do whatever you can,” Link said, taking a sip of his coffee. Tongue burned on the first sip. “Ow,” he continued, looking stubbornly at the offending cup.
Sheik let out a laugh, a quiet reminder to be more patient. “That’s true. Other donations may be more useful,” he replied, turning back to the car, leading the way.
“What kind?”
The pause was long as they got back into the car, closed the doors, and were off again. “Nothing short of slavery could satisfy love,” Sheik said. It was a cutting kind of insight, but it wasn’t made in a cutting kind of way, just slightly laughing. “But if there weren’t Heroes willing to try in other ways, I suppose the world would sour.”
Link considered that as they drove on. Long black car through the center of the city, the train station traffic- people milling to and fro from the wide gape open metro mouth that Link had only recently come from himself. Thrown into the crowd of it all. The car circled around the great fountain, that same one that’d been there for hundreds of years, and then shouldered its way all crab-kingdom-bully through the narrower streets, the ones that were just as old.
The turned into another long stretch of relative emptiness, and then into a neighborhood that Link’s city eyes had missed until now. It started with townhouses of sorts, very clean and close together, and then it broke into small roadside parks, or grass lanes- grass, that was different- then rose up into large houses, actual houses and not apartments or multi-families, that seemed to have all the adornments. Link, poor country kid he was, was stuck so impressed by all of it that Sheik just had to watch him being amazed and laugh. “I didn’t know there was a neighborhood like this in Castle City,” Link said, turning to Sheik, dumfounded. Sheik just gave a nod, as though permitting the fact to be true, in reply.
The car turned off a main road, into an area with gated houses, spaced apart. They finally turned into one’s driveway; beyond the fence, Link could see a large house in pink-gray bricks, dark roof, bay windows. Shrubbery that was beyond arithmetic in its precise order, and flowers, lots of them and all in pastel colors, beside it. Shallow water for decoration, a garden beyond another gate.
The driver drove up to the gate and pressed some numbers into what Link could make out was some kinda mechanical box thing, as though it was a most solemn and priestly rite. The gates opened; a security guard checked the car, and it drove up to the front of the house.
It was colder now, cloudier, as Sheik and Link stepped out. They were admitted by some more guards, whose uniforms were more ornate than the first. Sheik was let through without question but Link was frisked- an ordinary procedure, but it looked ridiculous in that he was the furthest thing from a suspect that you could imagine.
“I feel like a criminal,” Link laughed, airily.
“A good sign; it’s almost a requisite to feel so here,” Sheik chuckled in reply.
Nobody led them, Sheik seemed to know the way. Solemn portraits of dead dignitaries (“A famous calypso singer,” Sheik said, pointing with the newspaper, indicating a picture of a man with a powerful mustache and foul-looking wrinkles) were the windows of the hall; other than that, it was a clear sort of place, with thin, watery sunlight and somber furniture.
The walk was fairly short (for a gigantic house, that is); they came to heavy wooden doors, as Sheik said, “And this room is a garden for an ivory woman; and here she is, at attention.”
Link closed the door behind them, then turned; Zelda was there, unperturbed, truly with the look of being in a garden. Rather, it was a library (that could very well be an ivory woman’s garden), or a study, with a few cursory chairs, a reading table, a window at the only place where there were no bookcases. The furniture was typically royal, in a way that might cut off oxygen to the brain. Make you braindead. She sat at that table, over a book, looking up at them- a statue waking from its sleep and its peace. Casual in her sundress. Link couldn’t read her eyes; he felt out of place for a moment, thinking, by the way she looked at him, that she’d expected or wanted to see Sheik alone.
“Good morning, Sheik,” she said, and then turning to Link (taking a moment to remember his name), “Good morning, Link.”
“-Morning,” Link said, feeling as though he was missing the proper attire for this game. His hands turned a nervous circle around his half-empty cup of coffee.
Sheik walked toward her, leaned against the table, looked down at her book. Aside from the book, there was a teacup with some tea leaf remains, a decanter of clear gold liquid. Her hair fell over her shoulder in a blindingly childish way; she was distracting, her hands on the book like hands on a holy signal.
“Zoran history,” she said, not looking up at Sheik.
“As though either could exist,” Sheik commented, and then, looking disinterested, turned over her teacup into its saucer. He perused the leaves’ shapes for a moment, like looking on a map; then his eyes turned toward Zelda, though you could tell he was rather watching Link. “A snake and a dagger; gifts from enemies, crowded by daisies.”
Zelda turned a page in the book, seeming like she was saying “Just one more page, then I’ll stop.” Link looked curiously at Sheik, with a faithful smile. “What do you mean?”
“It’s fortune-telling,” Sheik replied.
“You can do that?” Link asked, just about ready to ask Sheik to read whatever was left in his coffee.
“Oh, I may be toying with fate,” Sheik answered; “Who predicts the future- the cards or the future?”
“Neither; it’s the listener who predicts it,” Zelda answered, then closed her book, looked from Link to Sheik, eyes like glass.
“All the princesses called Zelda have divine wisdom,” Sheik said, pushing his mystery in an almost satirical way, his eyes scanning Link for a reaction. Then, handing the newspaper to Zelda, “I’ve brought you your news.” Like she could choose to take it or leave it.
Zelda took the newspaper and put it aside with a thank you. Link paused for a moment, his mouth turning in thought. “But how do they know which princess to name Zelda?” he asked, as though cracking a case.
“The royal family has many secrets,” Sheik answered, his voice itself like smoke. “It’s usually the one born with a caul.”
Link interrupted him for a moment- “Whatsa caul?” he asked.
Sheik looked at him consideringly. “A caul’s the placenta- if the baby’s born with the placenta, call it a caul.”
“Ew,” Link said shortly, in a way telling Sheik to go on.
Sheik laughed softly, shortly. “If the baby girl’s born with a caul,” he continued, leaning forward the table. “Or with her eyes open. Zelda here was born with her eyes open.” He motioned with warmth to Zelda. “That means she’s in no way safe from drowning.”
“Why would she be safe from drowning?” Link asked. Zelda could even tell that he was enamored, eaten by curiosity, with Sheik’s world of telltale signs and lost crossroads, crooked consequence and angeldust causes.
“Babies born with cauls are s’posed to be safe from death at water,” Sheik answered. Then with vicious comedy he turned his eyes to Zelda. “Are you sure, Princess, you weren’t born with a caul? I’d like to test if it’s true.”
Zelda’s eyes didn’t even tick up to meet his. “Or perhaps instead we should go back to the days of testing fortune-tellers and witches by throwing them in bodies of water.”
Even though they spoke so coldly, you could tell how fond they were of each other; or maybe their fondness was just familiarity. Either way Link let out a laugh. Sheik laughed with him, and the sound seemed to trigger something in Zelda, because she looked at him with something more than insurmountable coldness for a split second.
“Ah, but this nation is mired in religion; its history-” Sheik said the word as though it was a cousin of his he liked to gossip on- “-is suffocated with what some call superstition.”
“What do you call it? Please, sit down,” she said, addressing Link. Link did so, almost obediently.
“I call it by any name it responds to, or by any name at all that might tremble as finely. But perhaps Hyrule is not such a religious nation; I believe that’s covered,” Sheik went on, gesturing toward the newspaper with cobra grace. He lost his usual guard for a moment, and his eyes turned slimly to Link. “Would you like something more to drink?”
“Oh- I guess, if that’s okay,” Link answered, smiling. He didn’t notice that as he said it, Zelda looked to Sheik, slightly surprised, and that Sheik seemed to solidify- like he’d let something slip out that he shouldn’t have.
“I’ll call for more,” Zelda said, getting up, smoothing over the moment. Her figure was slim as Sheik’s, with softer lines, limbs long and dainty. Her body didn’t have the bravery of Sheik’s, but that was fine. Across the room there was a line; she picked up the phone and asked for more tea.
“Shall I read?” Sheik asked, his voice sloping as he picked up the newspaper.
“If you’d like,” Zelda answered. She sat back down, across from Link.
Sheik read the pages, all about the fire in people’s lives, the destruction and the magic. His voice tainted every word with infectious intrigue, imbued a sense of the exotic, from behind his mask. Keys to the scandal beyond all that ordinary smoke, yawning bored as a cat. The main story was one on Zoran nationalism (this was why Zelda had been reading the book); they had been part of the Kingdom of Hyrule for 50 years, and were growing listless, and dissatisfied with their lot. The popular opinion was that Zorans should have their own kingdom back; the Royal Family was listed as having an unpopular opinion, that they should not. There were some forgettable stories on the south (Ordon, Kokiri Forest, thereabouts), and about labor unions and the mayoral election (Link broke into helpless laughter when at Dotour’s name, to Zelda’s slight puzzlement). The piece on religion was a bore, it came to the “shocking” conclusion that 47% of Hylians were atheist, which, between Zelda and Sheik, seemed to be dismissed as utterly predictable. Link didn’t know either way. Zelda’s responses (from what Link could tell) were measured, and she seemed quietly thoughtful on each story- engaged in a monologue with herself, taking notes from the plagues.
For Link’s benefit, perhaps, Sheik read the advertisements in a laughably formal tone. News In Brief was dignified with a smattering of words selected at random from different pieces strung into what Sheik called the summary of today’s news, in brief: “Wild Senator Leaps Motherly Into Stockpiled Meat of Pornographic Actor.” Amid Link’s laughter and Zelda’s listening to it, Sheik commented, “Newspapers are graveyards.”
The most interesting thing was a story on a serial killer. “It was Colonel Mustard in the Kitchen with the Candlestick,” Link ventured to say, earning a laugh from Sheik and some movement, mercurial as light moving across water, that was almost a smile, from Zelda.
“The half-bastard son of a Keese,” Sheik said, as though reading from the paper.
Zelda answered, slow and sure- “‘Half-bastard’ is redundant.” The vulgarity of the word was contagiously cute off her formal tongue.
“And since when?” Sheik asked.
“Since the watermelon,” Zelda replied, shrugging simply.
Link grinned; they were two sides of the same coin, two synchronized halves. Her with her lily-white skin aglow with the air of the season; he with his rusted tan, a spice freckled with lidded blue night. It seemed easy talking, all of them; Link didn’t know this, of course, but conversations were something that Zelda did not often have the luxury of. She seemed to catch herself being too familiar, or too comfortable, at moments; but mostly, she seemed as relaxed as somebody like her could be.
The tea came late, maybe the maid knew that under the circumstances she could tarry. She laid the tray on the table, paying special attention not to disturb any other object as she did. “Thank you,” Link said, before any of them, and the maid gave him a smile of curiosity in return.
Zelda poured from the decanter into her tea cup; “What’s that?” Link asked.
Zelda looked up at him; now she was perhaps receding into her icy guard, her formality, because she was speaking directly to him and not to Sheik. She paused. “Whiskey. Would you like some?” she asked, moving to hand it to him.
“Oh- uhm, well- thanks,” he said, smiling. He took it from her, taking care not to touch her fingers. “You drink this with tea?”
Her eyes, though solid, darted to Sheik. “Politicians must drink; it’s their last chance at sanity,” he said, receding back. Link and Zelda seemed like two awkward teenagers with each other, and Sheik seemed like their chaperone.
“Are you a politican?” Link asked her, his smile quirking.
She tipped her head, just a little, as though thinking on it. “No. I’m more of an instrument,” she said, stirring sugar into her tea.
Link paused; perhaps thinking that that didn’t sound like a good thing to say at all, that he wouldn’t like to feel that way himself. But though the feeling pressed on him, he felt Sheik’s eyes on him, and turning to him, asked, “How much should I put in?” He held the decanter in suspension above his cup. After a deliberate moment, Sheik reached forward, his hand on Link’s, to guide the quantity. Link didn’t realize any implication, and instead, gauged the amount carefully. Zelda took a sip of her tea, watching the contact between their hands conservatively, speculatively, from behind the rim of her teacup. They three were, as anyone with eyes could notice, an odd triangle, and perhaps not an equilateral one.
Sheik took up the newspaper again; going through some columns, opinion pieces- eventually a piece on Zelda. Princess Zelda Returns to Castle City. “‘I believe in strengthening diplomatic ties between the people of the desert- Sheikah and Gerudo- and I hope to eventually come to a closer relationship with them, and one that can be beneficial to the interests of all parties involved,’ said Princess Zelda at a press conference upon her return yesterday morning,” Sheik read. “When asked what issues she would be focusing on while in Castle City, Hyrule’s largest urban center, the Princess said she would be preparing for a future visit to the Zoras, as well as participating in discussions about domestic issues, the specificity of which was not further discussed.”
Link turned his eyes to her. “I’d hate to read about myself in a newspaper,” he said, eyebrows furrowed, mouth worried.
Zelda didn’t shrug, but she seemed immune to it. “At time I feel like a ghost; it’s mostly not a problem, however,” she said, quite a clipped comment.
“Well,” Link said, turning to Sheik, “Sheik did say that newspapers are graveyards.” He offered a smile, as though it could cheer her up.
“That sounds as though I’m being quoted in one such graveyard,” Sheik answered, “And I wouldn’t take the danger.”
Zelda put down her teacup, having finished it (and implying, by her movement, the newspaper as well). “Have you eaten yet?” she asked. She got up from her place, eyes looking to Sheik.
“Is your schedule so free?” Sheik replied, tone half-mocking.
“For the morning,” Zelda said, dodging the derision. “Would you two like breakfast?”
Sheik got up as well, half-turning to Link, as though asking. Link stretched out, ruminated on the options. “Let’s take a walk,” he suggested, tone bright.
Sheik didn’t find it odd; Zelda seemed to, but either way, they were both roped in on the decision. All in jackets (Zelda in a heavy peacoat over her flimsy sundress, ankles exposed, bound to be the coldest out of all them) they filed out of the mansion, through a back door, past some guards who regarded them with curiosity. The garden was another thing of exactitude, its flowers were the ghosts of children; the leaves were disappearing already and the three of them walked it all under the veil, the almost-protection, of Sheik and Link’s easy conversation.
This was different, for Link, than the night that Sheik lived within; different from the clubs and the city streets and the bursts of color, the announcing trumpets. It was, like he’d thought earlier, the other half, and he liked it just as well. This kinda living sunlight museum, fleetingly crystalline. They all seemed to get along fine. Zelda was light and Sheik was dark, and they both bent in toward Link’s strong blues, his weary and courageous grays. It was very much an odd triangle, but one that already appeared to work- even if there was a separation, a jealous fire, or a nagging feeling, for now it was all new, and so those feelings were put aside.
NOTES;;
Thanks for reading! :D
pairing: Link/Sheik, Link/Zelda
rating: PG-13
summary: Where does love exist in this tunnel vision place? The city night doesn't give any answers, just looks back at you, waiting for your next move.
this chapter: Link, Sheik, and Zelda spend time together, and despite whatever nagging thoughts, whatever old feelings, whatever jealousies, might linger in the background, they find that they all get on quite well.
note: hahahahahaha /kills self forever/
• previous chapter
• 1.1 | 1.2 | 1.3 | 1.4 | 1.5
☆CHAPTER 1.6
“Y’know what this fucker said?” Raven asked, motioning rough to Sheik.
Zelda looked toward Sheik, eyes measured. “What?” she asked. Something in her eyes was on level with Sheik’s; they looked at each other without decor, as siblings might- as people who had spent hours and hours side by side might.
“He sed, ‘Everything’s forgiven when you got money,’” Raven said, smiling with a strange sweet edge that Link had never seen him put on before. “Can ya believe that shit?”
Zelda paused; her expression didn’t change. “Well, that seems about right,” she answered, simply, “That’s the way things are, in this world.” It was so strange- her voice was petal-soft but something about it was solid and steady.
“Of course,” Sheik said, smiling in his posture and folding his arms, “We’re not such thieves to steal the air we breath on.” He was again the shadow messenger, the trapeze artist with bloody words and a talent for incision; nobody but Zelda noticed that he seemed to have broken out of a strange trance.
Her eyes were conciliatory; she said, “We’re just thieves enough to breath it.”
“If that’s your mind,” he replied, voice fluid, with a shrug. “And how was your trip?”
“It was fine,” Zelda answered, and it was funny- there was no “oh, I’m so excited to see you,” no bloated endearments, no endearments at all- they seemed like they were picking up a conversation after five minutes’ separation, seemed to shift naturally into each other’s line of thought.
By now Link had snapped out of his trance and was feeling creepy and dumb for staring at her so long; she turned back to him, he started. “I’m Link,” he said, as though that hadn’t been said, then backtracked, trying to figure out what he should say; “I’m- Sheik’s friend.”
Her expression shifted subtly; she looked toward Sheik, and Raven interjected. “Yeah, these two shitheads’re real buddy-buddy,” he said, rolling his eyes, then gestured to them pointedly. “Should be fuckin’ illegal.”
Zelda’s head tipped a bit; short and musical, like a curious little girl. “Are you close?” she asked. Something about her voice was compelling, and Link caught his breath on its coldness.
He paused. “Yeah,” he said, with a smile, glancing toward Sheik who was carefully marking the gypsy lines of his standing, “Sheik was the first person I met in the city.”
“They even got playdates and shit,” Raven said, still with that sweet leaning, smile and eyes angled blade-pretty down on Zelda; he nodded in the general direction of Sheik and Link. “Link gets to stay over Sheik’s and fuckin’ everythin’.”
There was no comeback, as might’ve been expected; Sheik’s darkness just contracted, a jealous feeling just whispered into his limbs. Zelda, again, was the only one who noticed; and, seeming put-off by the news, looked to Link again, threw him off-guard again.
It was hard to gauge her; the conclusions that seemed to be made in those eyes were so far-off, so distant that he couldn’t even guess at them. She looked shortly at Sheik, and then to Link again, saying, “You’ve known each other for long?”
“Oh- uhm- a couple of months?” Link said, as though he was asking himself; he searched for the time in the back of his mind, but it was understandable that he couldn’t find it in a clear line. The images and colors were so strong on the heart that they weighed down logic with a closed fist. Occulted understanding with their amnesiac magic.
Then Sheik laughed, the dark edge of it sliding out between fine lines; he said, eyes fixing on Zelda, on the center of light like a blade poised for viewing, “To ask questions hidden behind clouds- someone may wonder what light you’re climbing at; when language travels with such hesitance, one must wonder what blade lingers at its heels. You seem to’ve learned a bit about politics on your trip.”
Zelda didn’t pause; she took every word as it was being said, let it steady before she spoke. “Or perhaps I’ve just always understood what is impolitic,” she answered, kinda speaking to the keeper at the gate.
Sheik seemed satisfied with that; or perhaps he was satisfied with having deflected her interest. His riddles seemed like familiar dogs to Zelda, it seemed she held a cryptic hand without wonderment or fear. Link wondered if anybody noticed what he noticed- but the night was still a pretty young thing, and everybody was looking at Zelda with eyes and minds focused on her light and not her shadow.
Raven seemed full of it, seemed like a satisfied cat lookin’ over Carnivore Alley; his mouth was a dangerously sharp, dangerously honeyed line over the cigarette he was working on, and he prattled on about this and that with Zelda, talking about everybody he’d love to insult and everything she’d missed. People interjected here and there; Link didn’t get a word in, but instead stood by Sheik, talking, barely watching it all go down.
“We should go and see another movie,” Link said, quite casually, words bubbling one up from the other, arms swinging. “We should go tonight! Maybe- ? I think we could do that...”
Sheik paused; thrown-off guard for a moment, coming up from under the thick liquid stillness of his blackened, inward feeling. The surface was shining before his eyes. Came up for a breath, said with a slight shrug, muscle laughing, “As you like.”
“What’s out, though? I have a feeling none of it’s going to be as funny as The Leviathan,” Link answered, all boyish grin.
Sheik paused; then, shifted, and returned the grin in a matter of syllables. “Perhaps we can film our own movie.”
Link laughed. “I think Raven should be the leading lady,” he answered.
“Of course,” Sheik responded, coolly, “A girl without family is lost in the city, her heart a city stricken with poverty, expecting immigrants, all her future before her.”
“And then she falls in love,” Link said.
Sheik nodded. “She falls in love with a dashing doctor who specializes in heart-attacks; giving them, that is, on a government-regulated basis. They must defeat the head priest of the heart attack, but, as we all know- that is almost unattainable.”
“Man, that’s tragic,” Link agreed.
“Of course. Endangering the temple by night, surprising the stars, all of those sacrilegious songs that our personal earth is too fast to notice. After an explosion and one or two sweeping violins, love will finally triumph. Then of course we cut to the credits.”
“We should start as soon as possible,” Link said, putting on this fake business-like tone, nodding, eliciting a slight laugh from Sheik.
“I leave it up to you, Sir Director.”
“You’re the producer then, right?”
“The producer is something I’ve always been; my work isn’t seen because I’ve been ever in the hands of incompetent directors,” Sheik answered, with the shine of a smirk in his eye (and was that too daring? he couldn’t keep track of his thoughts any longer).
“I’ll do my best,” Link said, smiling bright and broad, shoulders angled level to Sheik’s.
Sheik’s glance was fugitive; he said, eyes low, “And what shall we do now? Time ahead of us is full, and-” he laughed- “I’m in simply no mood to be forgiven.”
“I dunno,” Link shrugged, breezy, “Do you want to go?”
Sheik rose his eyebrows, tilted his head. “And Zelda?”
“Huh?” Link paused, eyes darting upwards, wondering what he meant; realization dawned on him, and he smiled quizzically. “Oh- well- not that I want to be rude,” he said, swallowing, eyes moving back to Zelda, and then quickly moving back, “If she wants to come, then- yeah, but we’ll see her some other time, right?”
Sheik paused. “Hm,” he nodded. This was something blooming exotic on the tip of his tongue, was poetry his hands could not wrangle into form.
Just then some people came up, two guys dressed in dark terms that Link would probably never be able to relate to, and started to talk politics and philosophy with inward smiles reflecting some kind of disdain. Some kind of impotency; talkin’ bout, does Zelda view the sovereignty as one with the people, and if not, who’s more important? And Zelda answered them in blithe terms, no words wasted, winter white. Her speech was beyond vocabulary, had wisdom powerful like an element in them, but the meaning was cuneiform. You could tell Raven was just itching to say something, but for some reason his tongue was stayed. He just stood there, looking like the old haunt of a cigarette, giving them back a smile that promised a few bruises. They went away after the discussion reached a certain point; the thing was all built on wires and heavily communicated but clipped at the wing. They dint speak to Sheik; Sheik would have just ended up explaining their own blood to them anyway. And that was truth they couldn’t stand to swallow.
Link didn’t understand it either way, he just watched and talked and had a few glasses of champagne whenever somebody came around with a tray. This scene- this scene that Zelda was the center of- was absolutely a world beyond his; he had a childish fascination with it, its movements and colors. In a bit, Raven, Shad, the writer, and the brothers had split from the center and moved toward Link; and Sheik, touching lightly on Link’s wrist as though to tell him it would be only a moment, moved toward Zelda. They spoke to each other quiet, familiar. Link had a feeling that even if he could hear them, he wouldn’t quite be able to understand what they were saying.
“Sheesh, those two fuckin’ faggots,” Raven bit, stubbing out the end of his cigarette in Link’s near-empty champagne glass, shoulders squaring on the defense, “Everywhere ya go it’s a world’a cheap faggots. They’re like fuckin’ rats, they’re everywhere.”
Shad gave one of those soft, polite smiles. “I found it interesting, to a degree,” he said, allowing, “I quite agreed with Zelda’s point of view on the matter.”
Raven scoffed, gave a disdainful eyeroll. “Damn yeah, you fuckin’ agreed with her,” he drawled, “You wanna agree with her all the way into her damn panties, eh? Ya goddamn cretin.”
Shad’s smile turned into a somewhat stumbling laugh, he shook his head as though nothing so impolite would cross the snow of his mind. “Well, I’ll be leaving with the twins soon,” he said, beginning to fold things away, his genteel formality unaffected by the blowing of a champagne night. “Does anyone else need a ride?”
“Where ya goin’?”
“I suppose back home.”
“Bah,” Raven said, waving dismissively, tongue clicking, “Shitheads. So, kid-” turning like a reckless wheel on the phrase and turning to Link, giving him a rough shove- “What’d ya think?”
“Not everyone’s a pervert,” the brothers chimed in seemingly faultless unison.
“-Anymore fuckin’ flack from you two an’ I swear-”
“It seems I’ve appeared in the battling hour,” Sheik said, coming up from anywhere, before at Zelda’s side and all at once at Link’s. “We’ll go now,” he continued, tripping up a tone of careless smiles, gesturing like a general for whomever wanted to follow to do so. They went out, the swarm of them, after Raven, the Lauryn Hill Brothers, and Shad said their goodbyes to Zelda- Raven’s coupled with a threat of happiness, the Brothers’ with their characteristic boredom, Shad’s with a halting kind of pink, somethin’ sad reflecting off his glasses. Then they fell in line, and the group moved like a wave.
Link looked over his shoulder- not knowing whether or not he should make some kind of formal greeting with her- and deciding against all that, smiled at her, wide, bright, cloudy. She took a small note of it, then with a small dip of her head, simply nodded back at him; the only thing that was missing was the crown.
Goodbyes and salutations didn’t assault them as they left, it was all without incident, without public murder; move back along the trail through the wreckage of cream and gold like outcasts of a Roman legion, unaffected and with a backalley triumph. The halls were nearly empty; the elevator was too. When they got in Raven told Link to press the button for the lobby. He did so, and then Sheik pushed the button for the 2nd floor. A private smile was exchanged and the thing went on until they’d formed a Christmas tree of lights; Sheik had a smile in his eyes, Link laughed, Raven was intensely frazzled. “Fucking- kids.”
They split in the lobby. It was just Raven, Link, and Sheik going out through the lobby doors and into the open air, the condensed dark. It was a mean, fresh wind that swept down from the trees, the bare imitation lightposts, to the sidewalk, and Link was dazed by the moment, been half-zombie walkin’ from when they’d gone into the gold-quiet elevator to the forward walk down the cement.
His heart had been swimming around his ears and buzzing in his hands when he had been face-to-face with a dream; but now as he was standing next to Sheik, it was level, and he was calm. “So what did you think?” Raven asked, pushing him by the shoulder again, pushing him forward.
Link gave a thoughtless shrug and smile. “She seems, uhm...- I like her.”
Such a strange carbonation, new thoughts and new roads, new avenues of thought. “Sure you do, e’erybody does. Man, who wantsta be home on a night like this? Let’s see here,” Raven said, pulling Link toward him, giving him a push, hands rough as a father’s, seeming to be in the mood to handle someone badly, “Lemme give you a coupla rupees and you go buy me a pack’a cigs.”
Link stumbled just a little bit but regained his balance, then looked at Sheik with an expression of surprise. “I think this is a day to remember- Raven has money!”
Sheik broke out of his smallness and quiet and looked tired criminal sidelong at both of them. “Truly something,” he permitted.
“Shaddap, both of you. Here,” Raven snapped, tossing a fistful of rupees Link’s way.
Link looked down at the lucky hand he’d just been passed, and then smiled, somewhat shy on it. “Uh- I’ve never bought cigarettes before...?”
“Whaddya mean by that?”
“I don’t really know,” with a bright laugh.
“Come on, kid, every time you buy cigarettes for a great guy you become a little less of a queerbait,” Raven answered, eyebrows slung on a low plane, eyes sliding like a snake’s. And addressing Sheik now- “But can you believe that? First time we see that chick, we gotta blow out after an hour. When can we get her outta all that gaddamn political slime?”
“Who knows? You’d see more life in the underworld; the world of the exalted is such a constant death that it stands completely halted- a bloodless living museum.” Then, pausing, adding sardonically under a short laugh, “But I s’pose it wouldn’t be too poor a thing that she remain a statue just a little while longer.”
Nobody seemed to catch it, it was just a slip of shadow liquid underneath the bright radar lights; Link, looking up toward them, toward the crowded rooftops, commented, “I guess we’ll see her when we see her. It’ll be fun.”
And so on, walking. Now blood and tears instead of milk and honey, but at least it was still bittersweet. As they walked on, slightly aimless, looking for a taxi or not even looking for one, Sheik took note of the breeze and Link walking in it. Even though Link had looked at Zelda with such a fascination, such an abandoned neon, it dawned on Sheik that he did not know what it meant to further the feeling, and simply left it at that. He seemed to have no grasp on the fact that Zelda was a princess, and her time was a commodity dealt in small handfuls. It was childish, simple.
Otherwise, the night had to end sometime. They three took separate taxis, Raven going home cigaretteless (maybe buying some on the way), and Sheik and Link toward Sheik’s house; it seemed easier that way. Link wasn’t exactly distant, but you could tell something was on his mind as he passed the rupees he’d forgotten to return to Raven from finger to finger, green and yellow moving hypnotic, like halcyon summer nights.
The morning was filled with powder pink and white, lazy and soft like any morning is when you’re choosing to wake up, not forced to by some military noise. It wasn’t exactly clear what Link woke up to- the pressure of the strengthening light, the presence of another, the dying and sweet smell of cigarette smoke- but his eyes opened to a kind and blissful marigold sun. Blue and gold, sun and sea where they meet become eternity. He was dazed for a couple of moments, then sensed that Sheik was nearby; he turned, slightly, saw that Sheik was facing away from him, moving in a way that was unusual for him- as though he was rushing away from some mistake...pulling up his face mask with one elegant hand, stubbing out a cigarette into an ash tray with the other.
“Morning,” Link said, smile hazy but immediate; “I forgot to give Raven his money back.”
“I can have it sent, if you’d like,” Sheik offered.
Link sat up. “Yeah, maybe- thanks.”
Slight pause, slim ice edging out under a window pane. “Are you comfortable?” Sheik asked, tone kept cool.
Link didn’t know what he meant for a moment; still didn’t really know, but figured he understood in a vague way. “Yeah,” he said, thumbing at his shirt, scents of an overgrown party stuck the cloth- raspberry and cigarettes- “Pretty much. How come?”
Then the ice fading away; Sheik looked primary and burned against the blue wall but then his demeanor was warm again and he reappeared from a distant shade, touching Link’s leg lightly. “We were called to an audience with Her Highness today.” More on the kidding side, none of the sarcasm that was present like an earthquake wave last night.
Link felt something like nervousness splash in his blood, to his hands, was elated just a bit. “Oh, really?”
Sheik nodded, looking at Link like a parent would a child, and continued, fingers like bird’s wings as he spoke. “Hm; I’ll arrange it. Of course an amount of pretense is necessary; perhaps I can lend you a tuxedo.”
Link watched him with a lopsided grin as he got up. “Or a black turtleneck.” He could tell by the look Sheik tossed back to him that he had the intention of smiling; Link washed up in the bathroom (on the small side, its layout a bit unfamiliar) while Sheik talked on the phone in the hall. All elements of film noir in his secretive posture, curved with quiet fatality. He did not have the regal air that somebody might put on when dealing in such things, was rather more alone than that.
So after some time spent quiet they were out in the morning, with the car sitting out front, driver jamming on the horn because he didn’t feel to wait too long. The sunlight was strong and white and the air around them still had that untouched feeling, prosperous, wet. Autumn chill was falling into winter territory and they shuffled in next to each other; Link noticed that the driver seemed to already know where to go, and he was stonelike.
And they started out. The long empty roads from where Sheik lived, yawning schoolkids, black leather Tuesday feel in the way the light breathed so pink. Coffee stands and workers all empty. Sheik didn’t talk much, seemed to ruminate on the view that passed by, for all outside eyes looking like a child raised up to be a soldier, imbued with impersonal duty. He really did look like somebody’s last descendant, like he fulfilled the ravaged desert that he came from. Eyes out for a vengeance, but it was all softer than that. Sheik guiding them through the perilous city.
“We’ll stop here,” he said, leaning forward to the driver, hand bold against the sleek jet upholstery.
They stopped at a newspaper stand; Link didn’t know why, Sheik wasn’t the type for something like the news. A man stood by in a long green coat; he saw Link and must have pinned him as somebody who could help, because he asked for a couple of rupees, to promote “prayers of peace, of love,” in the city. Link thought it was a fair request, and an important one, so he fished in his pocket for some stray rupees. “May the spirit of love descend upon you,” the man said, through his teeth either a saint or a conman, while Sheik turned away from the newsstand and to Link and the car.
“Praying for love?” Sheik asked, handing Link a steaming cup of coffee. It was typical Sheik, he seemed to know everything, from top to bottom, and had the most mysterious sources.
“Oh,” Link said, like he had been found out, and then shrugged, light skipping off his eyes. “I guess so.”
Sheik turned his head, seeming to consider it. “Could money buy such prayers?- And where do prayers go, but into the blaze of unknown things- of ‘tomorrow,’ of ‘perhaps,’ a long and fierce sort of weariness?”
“Hm. I guess it’s important, though, to do whatever you can,” Link said, taking a sip of his coffee. Tongue burned on the first sip. “Ow,” he continued, looking stubbornly at the offending cup.
Sheik let out a laugh, a quiet reminder to be more patient. “That’s true. Other donations may be more useful,” he replied, turning back to the car, leading the way.
“What kind?”
The pause was long as they got back into the car, closed the doors, and were off again. “Nothing short of slavery could satisfy love,” Sheik said. It was a cutting kind of insight, but it wasn’t made in a cutting kind of way, just slightly laughing. “But if there weren’t Heroes willing to try in other ways, I suppose the world would sour.”
Link considered that as they drove on. Long black car through the center of the city, the train station traffic- people milling to and fro from the wide gape open metro mouth that Link had only recently come from himself. Thrown into the crowd of it all. The car circled around the great fountain, that same one that’d been there for hundreds of years, and then shouldered its way all crab-kingdom-bully through the narrower streets, the ones that were just as old.
The turned into another long stretch of relative emptiness, and then into a neighborhood that Link’s city eyes had missed until now. It started with townhouses of sorts, very clean and close together, and then it broke into small roadside parks, or grass lanes- grass, that was different- then rose up into large houses, actual houses and not apartments or multi-families, that seemed to have all the adornments. Link, poor country kid he was, was stuck so impressed by all of it that Sheik just had to watch him being amazed and laugh. “I didn’t know there was a neighborhood like this in Castle City,” Link said, turning to Sheik, dumfounded. Sheik just gave a nod, as though permitting the fact to be true, in reply.
The car turned off a main road, into an area with gated houses, spaced apart. They finally turned into one’s driveway; beyond the fence, Link could see a large house in pink-gray bricks, dark roof, bay windows. Shrubbery that was beyond arithmetic in its precise order, and flowers, lots of them and all in pastel colors, beside it. Shallow water for decoration, a garden beyond another gate.
The driver drove up to the gate and pressed some numbers into what Link could make out was some kinda mechanical box thing, as though it was a most solemn and priestly rite. The gates opened; a security guard checked the car, and it drove up to the front of the house.
It was colder now, cloudier, as Sheik and Link stepped out. They were admitted by some more guards, whose uniforms were more ornate than the first. Sheik was let through without question but Link was frisked- an ordinary procedure, but it looked ridiculous in that he was the furthest thing from a suspect that you could imagine.
“I feel like a criminal,” Link laughed, airily.
“A good sign; it’s almost a requisite to feel so here,” Sheik chuckled in reply.
Nobody led them, Sheik seemed to know the way. Solemn portraits of dead dignitaries (“A famous calypso singer,” Sheik said, pointing with the newspaper, indicating a picture of a man with a powerful mustache and foul-looking wrinkles) were the windows of the hall; other than that, it was a clear sort of place, with thin, watery sunlight and somber furniture.
The walk was fairly short (for a gigantic house, that is); they came to heavy wooden doors, as Sheik said, “And this room is a garden for an ivory woman; and here she is, at attention.”
Link closed the door behind them, then turned; Zelda was there, unperturbed, truly with the look of being in a garden. Rather, it was a library (that could very well be an ivory woman’s garden), or a study, with a few cursory chairs, a reading table, a window at the only place where there were no bookcases. The furniture was typically royal, in a way that might cut off oxygen to the brain. Make you braindead. She sat at that table, over a book, looking up at them- a statue waking from its sleep and its peace. Casual in her sundress. Link couldn’t read her eyes; he felt out of place for a moment, thinking, by the way she looked at him, that she’d expected or wanted to see Sheik alone.
“Good morning, Sheik,” she said, and then turning to Link (taking a moment to remember his name), “Good morning, Link.”
“-Morning,” Link said, feeling as though he was missing the proper attire for this game. His hands turned a nervous circle around his half-empty cup of coffee.
Sheik walked toward her, leaned against the table, looked down at her book. Aside from the book, there was a teacup with some tea leaf remains, a decanter of clear gold liquid. Her hair fell over her shoulder in a blindingly childish way; she was distracting, her hands on the book like hands on a holy signal.
“Zoran history,” she said, not looking up at Sheik.
“As though either could exist,” Sheik commented, and then, looking disinterested, turned over her teacup into its saucer. He perused the leaves’ shapes for a moment, like looking on a map; then his eyes turned toward Zelda, though you could tell he was rather watching Link. “A snake and a dagger; gifts from enemies, crowded by daisies.”
Zelda turned a page in the book, seeming like she was saying “Just one more page, then I’ll stop.” Link looked curiously at Sheik, with a faithful smile. “What do you mean?”
“It’s fortune-telling,” Sheik replied.
“You can do that?” Link asked, just about ready to ask Sheik to read whatever was left in his coffee.
“Oh, I may be toying with fate,” Sheik answered; “Who predicts the future- the cards or the future?”
“Neither; it’s the listener who predicts it,” Zelda answered, then closed her book, looked from Link to Sheik, eyes like glass.
“All the princesses called Zelda have divine wisdom,” Sheik said, pushing his mystery in an almost satirical way, his eyes scanning Link for a reaction. Then, handing the newspaper to Zelda, “I’ve brought you your news.” Like she could choose to take it or leave it.
Zelda took the newspaper and put it aside with a thank you. Link paused for a moment, his mouth turning in thought. “But how do they know which princess to name Zelda?” he asked, as though cracking a case.
“The royal family has many secrets,” Sheik answered, his voice itself like smoke. “It’s usually the one born with a caul.”
Link interrupted him for a moment- “Whatsa caul?” he asked.
Sheik looked at him consideringly. “A caul’s the placenta- if the baby’s born with the placenta, call it a caul.”
“Ew,” Link said shortly, in a way telling Sheik to go on.
Sheik laughed softly, shortly. “If the baby girl’s born with a caul,” he continued, leaning forward the table. “Or with her eyes open. Zelda here was born with her eyes open.” He motioned with warmth to Zelda. “That means she’s in no way safe from drowning.”
“Why would she be safe from drowning?” Link asked. Zelda could even tell that he was enamored, eaten by curiosity, with Sheik’s world of telltale signs and lost crossroads, crooked consequence and angeldust causes.
“Babies born with cauls are s’posed to be safe from death at water,” Sheik answered. Then with vicious comedy he turned his eyes to Zelda. “Are you sure, Princess, you weren’t born with a caul? I’d like to test if it’s true.”
Zelda’s eyes didn’t even tick up to meet his. “Or perhaps instead we should go back to the days of testing fortune-tellers and witches by throwing them in bodies of water.”
Even though they spoke so coldly, you could tell how fond they were of each other; or maybe their fondness was just familiarity. Either way Link let out a laugh. Sheik laughed with him, and the sound seemed to trigger something in Zelda, because she looked at him with something more than insurmountable coldness for a split second.
“Ah, but this nation is mired in religion; its history-” Sheik said the word as though it was a cousin of his he liked to gossip on- “-is suffocated with what some call superstition.”
“What do you call it? Please, sit down,” she said, addressing Link. Link did so, almost obediently.
“I call it by any name it responds to, or by any name at all that might tremble as finely. But perhaps Hyrule is not such a religious nation; I believe that’s covered,” Sheik went on, gesturing toward the newspaper with cobra grace. He lost his usual guard for a moment, and his eyes turned slimly to Link. “Would you like something more to drink?”
“Oh- I guess, if that’s okay,” Link answered, smiling. He didn’t notice that as he said it, Zelda looked to Sheik, slightly surprised, and that Sheik seemed to solidify- like he’d let something slip out that he shouldn’t have.
“I’ll call for more,” Zelda said, getting up, smoothing over the moment. Her figure was slim as Sheik’s, with softer lines, limbs long and dainty. Her body didn’t have the bravery of Sheik’s, but that was fine. Across the room there was a line; she picked up the phone and asked for more tea.
“Shall I read?” Sheik asked, his voice sloping as he picked up the newspaper.
“If you’d like,” Zelda answered. She sat back down, across from Link.
Sheik read the pages, all about the fire in people’s lives, the destruction and the magic. His voice tainted every word with infectious intrigue, imbued a sense of the exotic, from behind his mask. Keys to the scandal beyond all that ordinary smoke, yawning bored as a cat. The main story was one on Zoran nationalism (this was why Zelda had been reading the book); they had been part of the Kingdom of Hyrule for 50 years, and were growing listless, and dissatisfied with their lot. The popular opinion was that Zorans should have their own kingdom back; the Royal Family was listed as having an unpopular opinion, that they should not. There were some forgettable stories on the south (Ordon, Kokiri Forest, thereabouts), and about labor unions and the mayoral election (Link broke into helpless laughter when at Dotour’s name, to Zelda’s slight puzzlement). The piece on religion was a bore, it came to the “shocking” conclusion that 47% of Hylians were atheist, which, between Zelda and Sheik, seemed to be dismissed as utterly predictable. Link didn’t know either way. Zelda’s responses (from what Link could tell) were measured, and she seemed quietly thoughtful on each story- engaged in a monologue with herself, taking notes from the plagues.
For Link’s benefit, perhaps, Sheik read the advertisements in a laughably formal tone. News In Brief was dignified with a smattering of words selected at random from different pieces strung into what Sheik called the summary of today’s news, in brief: “Wild Senator Leaps Motherly Into Stockpiled Meat of Pornographic Actor.” Amid Link’s laughter and Zelda’s listening to it, Sheik commented, “Newspapers are graveyards.”
The most interesting thing was a story on a serial killer. “It was Colonel Mustard in the Kitchen with the Candlestick,” Link ventured to say, earning a laugh from Sheik and some movement, mercurial as light moving across water, that was almost a smile, from Zelda.
“The half-bastard son of a Keese,” Sheik said, as though reading from the paper.
Zelda answered, slow and sure- “‘Half-bastard’ is redundant.” The vulgarity of the word was contagiously cute off her formal tongue.
“And since when?” Sheik asked.
“Since the watermelon,” Zelda replied, shrugging simply.
Link grinned; they were two sides of the same coin, two synchronized halves. Her with her lily-white skin aglow with the air of the season; he with his rusted tan, a spice freckled with lidded blue night. It seemed easy talking, all of them; Link didn’t know this, of course, but conversations were something that Zelda did not often have the luxury of. She seemed to catch herself being too familiar, or too comfortable, at moments; but mostly, she seemed as relaxed as somebody like her could be.
The tea came late, maybe the maid knew that under the circumstances she could tarry. She laid the tray on the table, paying special attention not to disturb any other object as she did. “Thank you,” Link said, before any of them, and the maid gave him a smile of curiosity in return.
Zelda poured from the decanter into her tea cup; “What’s that?” Link asked.
Zelda looked up at him; now she was perhaps receding into her icy guard, her formality, because she was speaking directly to him and not to Sheik. She paused. “Whiskey. Would you like some?” she asked, moving to hand it to him.
“Oh- uhm, well- thanks,” he said, smiling. He took it from her, taking care not to touch her fingers. “You drink this with tea?”
Her eyes, though solid, darted to Sheik. “Politicians must drink; it’s their last chance at sanity,” he said, receding back. Link and Zelda seemed like two awkward teenagers with each other, and Sheik seemed like their chaperone.
“Are you a politican?” Link asked her, his smile quirking.
She tipped her head, just a little, as though thinking on it. “No. I’m more of an instrument,” she said, stirring sugar into her tea.
Link paused; perhaps thinking that that didn’t sound like a good thing to say at all, that he wouldn’t like to feel that way himself. But though the feeling pressed on him, he felt Sheik’s eyes on him, and turning to him, asked, “How much should I put in?” He held the decanter in suspension above his cup. After a deliberate moment, Sheik reached forward, his hand on Link’s, to guide the quantity. Link didn’t realize any implication, and instead, gauged the amount carefully. Zelda took a sip of her tea, watching the contact between their hands conservatively, speculatively, from behind the rim of her teacup. They three were, as anyone with eyes could notice, an odd triangle, and perhaps not an equilateral one.
Sheik took up the newspaper again; going through some columns, opinion pieces- eventually a piece on Zelda. Princess Zelda Returns to Castle City. “‘I believe in strengthening diplomatic ties between the people of the desert- Sheikah and Gerudo- and I hope to eventually come to a closer relationship with them, and one that can be beneficial to the interests of all parties involved,’ said Princess Zelda at a press conference upon her return yesterday morning,” Sheik read. “When asked what issues she would be focusing on while in Castle City, Hyrule’s largest urban center, the Princess said she would be preparing for a future visit to the Zoras, as well as participating in discussions about domestic issues, the specificity of which was not further discussed.”
Link turned his eyes to her. “I’d hate to read about myself in a newspaper,” he said, eyebrows furrowed, mouth worried.
Zelda didn’t shrug, but she seemed immune to it. “At time I feel like a ghost; it’s mostly not a problem, however,” she said, quite a clipped comment.
“Well,” Link said, turning to Sheik, “Sheik did say that newspapers are graveyards.” He offered a smile, as though it could cheer her up.
“That sounds as though I’m being quoted in one such graveyard,” Sheik answered, “And I wouldn’t take the danger.”
Zelda put down her teacup, having finished it (and implying, by her movement, the newspaper as well). “Have you eaten yet?” she asked. She got up from her place, eyes looking to Sheik.
“Is your schedule so free?” Sheik replied, tone half-mocking.
“For the morning,” Zelda said, dodging the derision. “Would you two like breakfast?”
Sheik got up as well, half-turning to Link, as though asking. Link stretched out, ruminated on the options. “Let’s take a walk,” he suggested, tone bright.
Sheik didn’t find it odd; Zelda seemed to, but either way, they were both roped in on the decision. All in jackets (Zelda in a heavy peacoat over her flimsy sundress, ankles exposed, bound to be the coldest out of all them) they filed out of the mansion, through a back door, past some guards who regarded them with curiosity. The garden was another thing of exactitude, its flowers were the ghosts of children; the leaves were disappearing already and the three of them walked it all under the veil, the almost-protection, of Sheik and Link’s easy conversation.
This was different, for Link, than the night that Sheik lived within; different from the clubs and the city streets and the bursts of color, the announcing trumpets. It was, like he’d thought earlier, the other half, and he liked it just as well. This kinda living sunlight museum, fleetingly crystalline. They all seemed to get along fine. Zelda was light and Sheik was dark, and they both bent in toward Link’s strong blues, his weary and courageous grays. It was very much an odd triangle, but one that already appeared to work- even if there was a separation, a jealous fire, or a nagging feeling, for now it was all new, and so those feelings were put aside.
NOTES;;
Thanks for reading! :D